


Sanctuary

by ThiccDiccEnergy



Category: Doom (Video Games)
Genre: Badass Reader, Blood, Doomguy is Soft for You, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, Fighting Kink, Goats, Happy Ending, I have too much stupid survival knowledge now here take this, Injury, Multi, Play Fighting, Reader-Insert, Size Kink, You are a Badass
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:54:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 25,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26395231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThiccDiccEnergy/pseuds/ThiccDiccEnergy
Summary: You had settled into a tiny corner of the world. Living with your five goats and five chickens. You got along pretty well alone. That all changes when a Doom Marine stumbles into camp. The world has ended, but around him it feels less like an end and more like a new beginning.
Relationships: Doom Slayer | Doomguy/Reader, Doom Slayer | Doomguy/You
Comments: 52
Kudos: 266





	1. Introduction, liberties I have taken with the game and traits that the Reader is presumed to have.

**Author's Note:**

> This is some soft, relaxing apocalypse fiction. You're a survivor, never forget that. Will be added to as time goes on. Rating changed to explicit because it's getting explicit.

Traits of the reader:

Has ADHD.  
Is shorter than doom guy.  
Is bisexual.  
Is in their mid to late twenties.  
Has settled in the north east united states. 

Liberties that I have taken with Doom: 

All of earth is not uninhabitable, the world has been recovering since the initial wave of fires destroyed almost everything. Most of humanity is dead or part of religious cults.  
It has been about five years since the initial invasion of earth.  
Doom guy is in his mid twenties.  
Doomguy is around six foot eight or 200 cm and weighs roughly 350lbs or 175kg, look at Tom Stoltman for examples of the build that his description is based on.  
In armor, Doomguy is roughly seven feet tall (the extra height accounts for his boots and helmet).  
Doomguy has hazel/green eyes as in doom eternal.  
Doomguy will be fighting alone (with vega) for earth's freedom.  
Doomguy has a space base. Sue me. The one in Eternal was amazing.  
Doomguy is an enhanced human, I took that to mean that he has an elevated healing factor and great physical ability.

Introduction:

Your house was on fire, your neighborhood was on fire, the whole world was on fire. The apocalypse, ragnarok, armageddon, call it whatever you wanted, the earth was razed and people were dead or dying. 

The creatures came for you in the afterparty. Things like bloated worms a dozen feet long, creatures that moved as fast as horses, Mike Wazoski looking mother fuckers that bobbed through the sky. They slaughtered the people that had been resourceful or lucky enough to survive the first wave. 

You were like everyone else at first. You had too many questions, and the world outside was so hot and hostile and impossible to survive in, how were you supposed to live now? 

The earth was gone, burned and salted and barren. So, you stuck together, found strength in numbers, you moved around like rats scurrying from gutter to gutter. You never left the safety of others, unwilling to die alone.

You started having second thoughts as soon as people started suggesting that it was better to take yourself out than to suffer in this new reality. 

You left the rest of what humanity had become when they sacrificed an old man to a god that had already cast you to hell. 

You ran.

You were alone.


	2. Goat Butter Soap

Your homemade ginger beer was calling you, but your goat Lottie had just given birth to not one, not two, but three kids, and there was not enough milk for all of them. That meant that you had to sit with your back to a hay bale and nurse the smallest one on milk that you had saved in your ice house until the other two finally gave their mom a break.

“Dang Lottie, you and Arnold really have no chill.” Lottie's pretty brown and white head rose in response to her name, and you could have sworn that she gave you a shit eating grin around her mouthful of hay. Arnold was playing alpha goat, pacing around and bleating at anything that moved more than an inch. Not that he would be able to do anything if there actually was danger. The little black goat was half the size of Lottie, and his horns weren’t the best of weapons.

After a few hours of nursing, you were finally able to release the runt of the litter back to his mother. You tried not to get too attached to goats that would be meat one day, but you had already named the tiny one ‘John’ in your head. He would need a strong name to get himself through the next few weeks. As much as you wanted another milk goat like Lottie, you hoped that she and Arnold wouldn't have babies again anytime soon.

You stood and cracked your back, stepping out of the shack where you kept the goats and into the clearing around your house. The sun hitting your face surprised you, you hadn’t realized that day had broken while you were in there. By the position of the sun (the only metric of time that you had anymore) you guessed that it was about ten in the morning, you had been with Lottie since she woke you with her cries at an ungodly time of night. It was well past the time that the chickens should have been let out, so you wandered over to slide up the door to their hutch and lay some feed for them in their pen.

The exhaustion was tugging at you, but the night with your goats had left you covered in blood and other fluids that you didn’t bother to identify. You badly needed a bath.

The closest water source was a quarter of a mile away. You had reserves around your homestead, it had been a stroke of genius to dig pits and line them with tarps and clay gathered from the riverbank. Rain water collected in your tiny, man-made ponds and kept your animals cool and hydrated in the heat of day. You kept boiled, sterile water for your own drinking in a barrel at the house, but for your bathing needs? You weren’t wasting precious fresh water for that.

Your house was more of a lean-to. It held a stove, a hammock, and a shelf for folded clothing and food storage. Strung between the house and its overhanging tree (okay maybe having a tree overshadowing your house wasn’t the best idea, but it kept you from baking in the summer) was a clothes line, and a cellar was accessed through a trapdoor on the side of your dwelling. Another trap door was on the far side of the clearing. That one led down into your ice house, an underground room with ice blocks stacked as tall as you were. The whole thing was lined with packed clay and dried grass, and more dried grass insulated the space between the blocks. You had hand cut that ice in the winter, and had taken a frozen dip that left you with an appreciation for the thick furs that were piled onto your hammock. You may not be a doom marine, but you were a first-class scavenger, if anyone was around, they would think that you murdered bears and small, fluffy animals for a living (you guessed once the goats got old enough that would be true).

You grabbed one of your towels and your dirty laundry and headed for the river. May as well get your chores done while you clean up.

One of the best things that you learned how to do since the world ended was how to make your own soap. People didn’t know how important soap was until they could no longer buy it in stores with slips of paper. All you needed was some kind of fat or oil, and white ash. You got your ash from burning oak until it was white and powdery, and your fat came from goat butter and the lard of animals that you had scavenged or killed. Soap was a game changer. It kept things clean and sterile, and it eliminated body odor that made it a lot easier for things to know you were there when you really didn’t want things to know you were there. Cleanliness had become somewhat of an obsession for you in the apocalypse through pure necessity.

You finished your bath as quickly as humanly possible and began vigorously scrubbing the stains out of your dirty laundry on a large rock. When washing clothes it was equally important to clean the rock that served as your washboard. You kept yours propped against a tree, it had been smoothed to a near glass sheen. You were aggressively pounding the stains out of a thick shirt when the braying of a familiar goat rang out from the direction of your house. You let out a groan.

“Arnold I swear I’m going to eat you!” you swept your barely-clean clothes into your arms and started trudging back towards the house. Increasing your pace as you approached and realize that (for once) this was no false alarm, there was something in the yard. You broke into a sprint, praying that it wasn’t one of those things that you had worked so hard to fight for this little slice of your planet.

Now you had been alone for a long time. If the seasons were to still be believed than almost five years. Imagine your surprise when you tore through the gate in your fence and bore witness to a man so tall he was practically a giant facing off against Arnold and a rooster that you affectionately called Hei-Hei because he was so stupid he would challenge a wolf without your intervention.

Your first thought was ‘what the fuck’, you hadn’t seen another human in years, and now one shows up in full doom marine armor in your front yard?

Your second thought was ‘holy fuck, is that guy holding John?’ sure enough, the man in armor was holding the runt of a black goat that looked so much like his father.

As a disclaimer, you are a smart person, you swear, but in that moment all you could think to do was wind up and chuck your bar of soap as hard as you could at the man holding your baby goat.

“You let go of him!” The doom marine turned around just in time for the hard bar of soap to hit him in the helmet. You were impressed at your own accuracy.

When you had a moment to think about what you were doing you would probably panic, but you followed up that bar of soap with the armload of damp clothes and then rushed, yes, rushed the doom marine.

You went for the kneecaps. You never made it to the kneecaps but you sure as shit tried. The marine swept the clean clothes to the side with one massive arm and proceeded to slam you to the ground so hard your ears popped. His hand was the size of your rib cage, you could feel his thumb on your collar bone and his pinky all the way beneath your armpit.

There was a pause in time. The buzzing of the world stopped and you both looked at each other with the caution of people that barely recognized what counted as human anymore. You scanned the gaps in his armor for any hint of red pustules, any indication that he may not be real. 

His visor didn’t let you see his face, instead it reflected the light and gave you a look at yourself, sprawled on the ground with gritted teeth and eyes that had dark circles so deep they made your entire face morph into something you didn’t recognize.

The moment broke, you let out an unpleasant wheezing sound and he tilted his head. He eased off of you with slow motions and his free hand held aloft to show he was unarmed. John was still cradled in his other arm, tucked against his breast-plate and looking serene and smug.

Arnold made a sound that was suspiciously close to a laugh.

“Shut it Arnold.” you muttered at him bitterly, then turned your attention back to the marine in front of you. He had knelt when he realized you weren’t a threat, and extended John to you with an aura you could only describe as sheepish. You wondered how someone you couldn’t see the face of managed to portray emotion so well.

“It's okay, you can keep holding him.” he immediately perked up and retracted John so that he could resume his cuddling session. “Did you see the other babies yet, there are two more.” he shook his massive head. “Oh, how the heck did John get out of the shack then? Little thing is trouble.” Arnold butted his horns into your shoulder. “Just like his dad apparently.” you thought the marine may have laughed at that.

“I'm sorry that I beamed you earlier, I panicked, kinda thought you were a bear at first.” he shrugged.

“I didn’t know that there were other people around here, I would have invited you over for dinner or something. Do you live close?” he stared at you, then shook his head slowly.

“Oh, just passing through then?” he nodded. “You… wouldn’t have happened to have seen anyone else? Would you?” No. He hadn’t.

“Oh, guess it's too much to hope that there's like a million of you about to take back the earth? Yeah, I figured.” you stood as Arnold butted you again.

“I’m letting your wifey out Arnold, cut your alpha goat shit.” Lottie trotted out almost as soon as the door opened, the other Kids at her heels. Baby goats got on their feet only an hour or two after birth.

They all immediately snuggled up to where the doom marine was sitting cross-legged on the ground. They treated him like he was some living plaything, climbing on top of his legs and headbutting him like they had a chance in a fight. Hei-Hei found a place roosting on his helmet. You laughed at him and bent to pick up your mangled clothes, putting them on the line while keeping an eye on the petting zoo that your little clearing had become.

“Hey mister Marine?” he looked at you, currently with a goat in each arm and a rooster ornament on his head.

“Are you still fighting them?” He nodded. 

Something in your chest unclenched. You weren’t weak, you had survived for so long all on your own! But there was some part of you that felt as if survival wasn’t enough. You should be fighting those things, helping other people! Instead you were sitting in your little glade with your chickens and goats, making soap and ginger beer.

“I-” your hands fisted in the cotton sheets you were hanging on the line.

“Do you think I could do that too?” you were a lot smaller than the Marine was, he was brushing seven feet in his armor and probably outweighed you by at least a hundred pounds without the suit, but surely there was something you could do. You had fought them before using some admittedly nasty tricks. You had lured them into a herd of elk to be trampled, laid pit traps for them, strung razor wire high in the tree tops that shredded anything that tried to fly into your border. You pushed them back whenever they appeared, and you hadn’t failed yet.

A heavy touch to your shoulder pulled you out of your thoughts. The plating of his glove was cold against your still-wet skin. The Marine was looking down at you. He jabbed you in the chest with one finger, then pointed to your little family of animals grazing in the grass behind him. Arnold and Lottie wouldn’t last a day without you. Without you here, the defenses would fall, and there were still plenty of natural predators wandering the forest that would make a snack out of the little ones.

You sighed and gave the Marine a slow thumbs up.

“Alright. I’ll leave the fighting to you.” he squeezed your shoulder gently and returned your thumbs up. You smiled.

“You’re welcome anytime, as long as you keep fighting there's a place for you here.” you felt like he may have smiled back under that helmet.

“Oh, and by the way, you might want to head out on the west side, I don’t know how you got in, but there's a few nasty surprises in the forest, crossing the river is the only safe way to get out of here.”

By the time you finished hanging your laundry, he was gone.


	3. Ginger Beer

The Marine came back a few weeks later. John was finally off of bottled milk, you had finished harvesting your blackberries, you had a decent crop of early carrots, potatoes, beets and onions (they were a little small) and the other two goats had names (despite your attempts to keep impersonal). You had started calling the brown one Jester and the black and brown speckled one Jack. 

You were chopping wood for your new smokehouse (a shack you had only recently managed to start building) when the sound of something heavy being dragged over gravel caught your attention. You brandished your axe and reached for the strips of leather that made up your sling. You kept your sling hanging on your belt at all times after your scare with the Marine, complete with a small pouch of stones. You had practiced with it obsessively, and had drilled so many holes into the dead oak tree by the river that it eventually fell. It could do a surprising amount of damage for something so small. 

The sound was coming from the direction of your gate, right where it opened to the river trail. 

“Holy fuck!” as soon as you stepped into view of the path you dropped the axe and shoved the gate open. 

The doom marine was standing on the other side of the fence, one arm clutching a nearby tree and the other holding a gun that must have weighed fifty pounds. He was soaking wet, and his left leg was bleeding out into the dirt. It was limp, still encased in armor. Judging by the drag marks he must have walked here all the way from the river. Holy shit, had he swam across it? With all that extra weight?

“Damn Marine, you sure know how to make an entrance.” you rushed to his side and slung his arm around your shoulder. As expected, he was unbelievably heavy. You dealt with the weight until you got him to the railing of your porch. 

“Hold onto this for just a second, I’ll be right back.” you placed his hand on the smooth wood of your rail and sprinted into the house, not bothering to close the door behind you. You grabbed a stained sheet and a first aid kit that you hoped would be enough for this. 

“Lie down.” you spread the sheet out and helped him sit as carefully as you could manage. He almost took you out when he was going down. You hoped your lawn wasn’t too uncomfortable. 

As your hands scrambled for the clasps that secured the plating over his wound, his came up to stop you. He grabbed your elbows and stopped your work.

“What?” he shook his head. 

“No? You’re bleeding out on my lawn!” he just shook his head again.

“I can’t stop the bleeding if you don’t let me see where you’re bleeding from! You’re at least three pints down and if you don’t- ack!” you were cut off as the Marine presumably lost consciousness, flopping down onto the sheet and taking you with him. You huffed out a panicked breath, struggling to pull yourself free. You succeeded in getting one arm back, but the other was still trapped in his grip. 

“Fuck!” you maneuvered yourself so that you could reach his leg. Fumbling with your only available hand at the clasps. You tore away the armor and the underlying cloth, revealing that something had driven a tube into his leg, a tube that was draining him of blood at an alarming rate. 

You cursed, the first thing you learned about medical care is that you should never pull something out of a wound until you got to a hospital; but this was the apocalypse, so you were the hospital. You told yourself that if he didn’t stop bleeding soon he would be dead anyway, then strained against the iron grip the marine had on your elbow so that you could wrap your hand around the thing sticking out of him. It was so big that your fingers barely touched around it. 

“Okay, on three.” you did the count in your head and heaved as hard as you could. 

The thing stuck in him slid out with a wet sucking sound. For a moment you just stared at it. It wasn’t a tube like you thought it had been, it was a fang. A foot long fang. Like from a giant snake. 

You cast it aside after a moment of shock, pulling against the Marines grip so you could grab the first aid kit and shove gauze over the wound. You put pressure on it and hoped that you had been in time. 

You were dozing with your back to the Marines breast plate, you had done your best to wrap the wound with torn strips of the sheet, and had disinfected it when the bleeding finally stopped. You had been worried when he passed out on you, but he had pulled through the day. 

It had been about eight hours since you became trapped, and night had begun to fall, leaving you to find a spot cradled in the crook of Marines arm. You sat with his heavy gauntlet on your lap and your body wedged in his armpit. Falling into an occasional nap when your head drooped to your chest. 

You were trying to stay as alert as possible, keeping an eye out for anything that was sneaking into the yard. You couldn't get up to close the goat shed or the door to the chicken coop, so the only thing you could do to protect them was ready your sling and hope that the feeble light of the setting sun was enough to warn you of any approaching danger. 

Marine finally shifted as the last pink glow faded from the horizon and a sliver of moon began to rise. The motion jolted you out of a shallow sleep. As he woke, the vice on your arm finally eased, you finally had two hands again, and the rush of blood returning to your fingers felt amazing. You slipped out from under his arm and knelt by his side. 

“Sleeping beauty awakens.” you dryly commented as he lifted himself into a sitting position with visible difficulty. He stared at you. 

You knew you looked like a mess. You were smeared with his blood, your hair was plastered to your head with grease, your lips were cracked, you had dark circles that could pass as black eyes, and you were pretty sure that salt from your sweat earlier in the day was visibly laying on your skin. 

Suddenly he grabbed your arm and lifted it to inspect. You let out a hiss. There had been too much adrenaline and too little blood flow to notice before, but your arm was bruised in the clear shape of Marines hand. 

“Oh yeah, your armor locked up when you passed out, lucky I got an arm loose or this thing would still be in your leg.” You reached over to where the fang was still sitting on the lawn, wrapped in a piece of torn sheet to keep the flies away. You held it towards him. “It’s gnarly, how big was the snake?” 

He was still staring at the bruising on your arm. 

“Oh relax you big baby, it was an accident, are you going to be mad at my door because it hit me on my way out this morning? No? Then don’t you dare be mad at yourself.” you stood and and cracked your back, after so long trapped in the same position the sound was sharp. 

“I’ll get you some water, stay put.” You started off by closing up the animals, used some precious water from your reserve to scrub your hands clean, then ducked back inside to get to the sanitized water that you painstakingly boiled and stored, acutely aware of Marines head twisting to follow your every move. 

“Here, you’ve got to replenish your fluids.” You averted your gaze while he took off his helmet, busying yourself with tightening his leg wrappings, you were impressed with yourself, you had done a pretty clean job with one hand. 

“Tell me if this hurts, I don't have anything too strong, but I have ibuprofen and alcohol if it gets too bad. Not to endorse getting drunk in the apocalypse but desperate times call-” a touch to your shoulder brought you out of your rant. 

You locked eyes with him and the air got punched out of your body. He was gorgeous.

Brown hair cut short and sloppy, hazel eyes like camel coffee and moss, a nose that was prominent and just a little bit crooked, a surprisingly plush pair of lips bisected with a slanted scar that did nothing to detract from their fullness. 

“Yeah?” you tried your best to keep your voice even, but it sort of squeaked out. 

“Thanks.” you winced at the sound of his voice, it was shot, it sounded like he hadn’t talked in a long time.

“So you can talk.” He gave a hesitant smile. 

“I can.” He shifted uncomfortably and went back to sipping his water. You couldn’t help but grin. He was...shy? Or maybe just awkward? 

“How does the leg feel?” He looked at you with a tinge of red to his cheeks. That was good, that meant he had blood to spare.

“It's alright. Hurts, but not too bad.” 

“Do you think you could eat right now?” 

“Yeah.” 

So you brought him dinner. It was some venison that you had frozen in the ice box. You quickly cooked it with a little wild garlic in your cast iron pan over the fire and served it with the blackberries you had picked that morning and some potatoes you stuck in the coals. You had only defrosted enough meat for one, so you chugged some water and shoved a few handfuls of berries down, you had a big lunch anyway.

“Sorry if it's pretty plain, I ran out of pepper and spice and stuff a long time ago, all I got is salt now.” he didn’t seem to care, he wolfed down his food. You wondered if it was enough for a guy his size. 

“Do you want more?” He shook his head. He was making an unpleasant face. He probably ate too fast. 

“Tell you what, I don’t normally do this, but for my favorite Marine I’ll make an exception. Wait here.” You ducked inside and snagged your bottle of ginger beer from where it was fermenting on the shelf. You had a little ice stored in a cooler, and you scooped some up in a cup on your way out. 

“It's not quite ginger ale, but it should work fine for an upset stomach.” You poured him a glass and held it out. 

You didn’t have a lot of pride left anymore, there wasn’t a lot to be proud of when survival was pretty much all that was on your mind. However, your fermented ginger beer was amazing. You watched in anticipation as he took a sip and his eyes went wide.

“Is it soda?” You grinned.

“It’s ginger beer, kinda nice to drink something fizzy isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it’s really nice.” You flopped down next to him on the remainder of the shredded, bloody sheet, taking a swig of your brew straight from the bottle. 

“So Marine, what nasty thing left that fang in your leg?”

Conversation with him was surprisingly easy. He answered your questions in short sentences at first, but you didn’t mind. Having someone to talk to felt amazing. You told him about your plans for the smoke house, about how your little stretch of woods extended a minimum of fifty miles to the north (you tried to hike it once and never got to the end), and about how you saw a demon get trampled by a herd of buffalo just over a week ago. 

“It was just on the other side of the river, I was checking the pit traps when I saw that fucker, but before I could do anything the ground just started rumbling. I would have never guessed that there were so many of them left, I had no Idea they even lived this far east, but I guess everything is grassland since it all burned down. The herd was thousands strong, somewhere out there is enough land to support all of those. I’ve got a pelt from a dead one that I found, that thing is the only way I get through the winters, I've also got two bear pelts, anyone seeing me now would think I can kill grizzlies with a sling and pure courage.” You looked at him and noticed that he was still watching you with interest from his lounging position. “Though who knows, I’ve never actually tried to kill a grizzly.” you make a muscle at him.

“What do you think? Could I take one?” He had the audacity to snort at you. 

“Hey!” You sputtered, your face going hot. You had reached that point of exhaustion that made you giddy (and the fact that you had only eaten a handful of berries and ginger beer in the last ten hours might have contributed).

“I’m strong! Just because I’m not a tank like you doesn’t mean I'm helpless!” You laughed, but he stayed quiet. You frowned. 

“What's wrong?” No response. You nudged him with your shoulder. “Come on man, you can tell me, it's not like I can tattle on you.” he exhaled heavily through his nose in what could have been a stifled chuckle. You counted it as a victory. 

“I like killing those things, but they’re tough and I’m not indestructible. Guess I realized I would have died today without you. I never said thank you for that.” Your face felt hot. 

“Well you’re the one out there fighting everyday, without you I would be out of hope and I’d be- well I’d be alone again. I never said thank you for that.” 

“That's different.” 

“Not from where I’m standing.” 

“You’re not standing at all.” You let out a startled laugh. 

“Was that a joke? I can’t believe my ears!” You shoved him playfully and he responded with a push that was probably gentle to him, but still took you down. You fell, giggling, onto your back. 

“The big dipper is still there.” with your head swimming from the lack of proper food and sleep, you pointed to the constellation in the sky. “It’s the only one I ever bothered to learn.” you followed the cup of the dipper out to the north star, forming a finger gun and shooting at it. 

“North star!” You looked up at Marine, only in that moment realizing that you had begun to call him that in your head, like a nickname that you never meant to give. “Hey Marine, do you know any?” He looked at you in a way that you could only describe as slow. His gaze itself was lingering, taking its time. 

“Any stars?” his voice sounded different to your sleep deprived brain. You liked it. 

“Yeah, don’t know what they taught you in boot camp, but you should share a little of that knowledge.” He looked thoughtful for a moment, then slowly lowered himself down to lay beside you. In the chill of the night you could feel the heat coming off of him. You weren’t sure if that was from the suit or from the man himself. 

“They didn’t teach us in boot camp, but my dad made me join the scouts when I was little and I remember some of them.” You looked over him, grinning so wide it hurt.

“You were little?” He nudged you, setting you off on a laughing spree again.

“I was a chubby kid in a school full of children that liked to call me butterball, my dad thought it would help me make friends.” You hummed and reached over, giving his shoulder a sympathetic pat. 

“I was one of those problem children, they put me in the front of the class to keep me focused and I still wouldn’t stop twitching. The other kids called me spaz.” 

“What’s changed?” You grinned. 

“Absolutely nothing Marine.” you scooted a little closer to him. “Now spill, which one of these sparkly dots makes a pretty picture.” He carefully eased himself over so that your shoulders were touching, his massive bulk protecting you from the prevailing westerly wind. It had gotten cold pretty quickly. 

“Aquila is the Eagle, she should be right...there. The brightest star in her is... Altair? Altar? I cant remember, but it’s that one.” he was pointing to something like you could see it. You gestured randomly at the sky, a cheeky grin already in place. 

“That one?” to your surprise he got closer, close enough that he was pressed against your entire left side. 

“No.” He pressed his temple to yours, and gently took your wrist in his hand. He shifted it a few inches. “It’s that one.” You gulped, surprised at the contact (surprised at how good the contact felt). You did your best to pull your mind away from the sudden warmth you were feeling and focus yourself back on the sky. He hadn’t let go of your hand, and he used it to point out the other stars. 

“It's part of the summer triangle.” he adjusted your hand so that you were pointing at another bright star. “That's the second one, I don’t know what its called but it’s in the Swan Cygnus.” he moved your hand again to point to a third bright star. “And that's Vega, in the constellation Lyra.” He hesitated for a moment, then moved your hand to a faint light in motion across the night sky. 

“Is that a satellite? I thought they would have all been destroyed by now.”

“They are, they’re pretty much all scrap.” You looked towards him, your faces so close together that your noses brushed.

“How do you know that?” 

“I-that's my base up there.” You paused a moment, then squinted at him with false suspicion.

“Are you an alien?” A slow smile spread across his face. 

“No.” 

“Are you sure, because that ass is out of this world.” He let out a startled laugh. It felt good to make him laugh, you had a feeling he didn’t do it enough. “That one is Scorpius, right?” 

“Yeah.” he took your hand again, whispering the names of the stars to you. You wanted to keep listening to him, but he was warm, and the day caught up to you as you lay against his side. You fell asleep some time through his explanation of Ophiuchus, the Serpent Bearer.

You woke up slowly. You were warm, but you could hear Arnold bleating to be let out. You dragged your eyes open slowly and almost recoiled when you found yourself wrapped up in Marine. Your face was pressed into his neck, he smelled like sweat. He had shifted during the night to envelop you in an arm, cradling you into his body and keeping you warm. In the rising sunlight you could see pale silver scars dotted over his skin. A particularly nasty looking one started halfway through his left ear and led all the way down the column of his neck, disappearing under the cover of his uniform. At one point it must have been severe enough to leave him at death's door.

Arnolds screaming intensified, and you conceded, trying to wiggle your way out from Marines hold without waking him. His arm tightened around your waist, pulling you flush to his chest so that he could curl around you protectively. 

“Hey big guy.” you placed a hand on his exposed bicep, gently squeezing. Arnold screamed again, and there was a rush of motion.

Marine rolled over you like a wave, flipping you onto your back and hunching over you, bracing to take a blow. You saw his fist poised above you from your position on the ground, and before you could react it was planted beside your head, rending a hole in your sheet and sinking a good few inches into your lawn. His other arm came up, a knife springing from his gauntlet and extending past his knuckles. In the span of a few moments he had gone from asleep to poised for action. You didn’t blame him, the same thing happened to you sometimes. 

“It’s just Arnold.” He jolted and looked down at where he had you trapped on the ground. “His scream sounds nasty, I know, he does that when he wants to wake me up.” He ignored you, retracting the blade into his gauntlet and checking you over. He grabbed your chin to turn your head, then lifted your arms, lingering on the bruise he had left, now a plumb color and swollen. 

“I’m fine big guy.” you let him complete his exam with no complaints. “Bad dream huh?” he slowly lifted you to your feet, keeping his hands on your hips. 

“Yeah.” 

“Well, lucky for you it’s just a dumb goat with no patience, and if my intuition is correct it won’t be long befo-” a crow cut you off. “That was Hei-Hei, it’s time to get the chickens out of the coop. You want eggs for breakfast? They’re fresh.” You gently extracted yourself from his hold and made your way to take care of your animals. 

“Hey! I didn’t tell you last night, but I named the other two goats. Jack and Jester, they’re-” you’re interrupted by Marine taking your wrist and yanking you back into his chest-plate. He held you there for a moment, a touch too tight. You didn’t complain, just wrapped your arms around him in turn and held on.

“Did I hurt you?” 

“Huh?”

“Did I hurt you? I have to know.” You laughed.

“The only thing you ever did to hurt me was come through that gate all busted up! You nearly gave me a heart attack!” You were a little exasperated with how careful he was being with you. You weren’t made of glass! “Now let's get breakfast in you. How do you like your eggs? I can make a mean omelet. Are you okay with goat cheese and onion? Or do you prefer just scrambled?” You continued walking, and nearly made it to the chicken pen when you realized that he wasn’t following you. You sighed and turned back to look at him. 

“You coming Marine? These eggs won’t pick themselves up.” He finally came after you, only the tiniest limp in his step to remind you of how he arrived. 

By the time you finished breakfast and he woke from the nap that you had bullied him into taking, he was healed. You gave him an apple from your tree, and told him to keep the doctor away. This time when he left, he said goodbye.


	4. Ice House

It was an ungodly hot day. You had thought that the weather was getting better, but just when you let your guard down you were hit with a scorcher. You had finished harvesting your bee hives, storing the gathered honey and immediately stripping out of your shirt and heavy canvas jacket. You had to wear it for beekeeping chores, just in case your hives were feeling particularly jumpy. It was a shame that the day you needed to wear it was the one day that the sun decided to say fuck it, and chuck radiation that could roast your chickens down on you. 

You sighed and stormed across the clearing, dragging open the heavy door to your ice box and descending into the polar climate below. You were careful to shut the door behind you, sealing in every last bit of that incredible cold. The interior of your ice house was a dual room system, the first room was a refrigerator, the cold from the freezer leached out past the door that separated the two sections and kept it pleasantly cool, it was also pitch black. If you really needed to find something you would leave the door open and grab it by the light that filtered in from the surface, but most of the time you didn't even need the light, you knew the layout by heart.

You brushed past shelves that held chilling goat milk and yanked open the last door between you and paradise. The freezer room was just that- freezing. 

You rested your overheated forehead on a nearby block of ice, sighing in contentment as the heat was leached out of your body. You grabbed a handful of your frozen blueberries, savoring their tiny pops of sweetness. One of these days you were going to try making goat milk Ice cream, but you were afraid it would turn out weird. Goat milk had a cheesy funk that normal milk lacked.

You had thought about using frozen blueberries and honey, but that just didn’t sound appealing when thinking about Tom and Jerries chocolate pretzel and salted caramel flavor. You hadn’t had chocolate in forever, just the thought of it was making your mouth water. 

A faint sound caught your attention. It was coming from your clearing. You fumbled your way through the dark back to the ladder, scrambling your way up and busting through the trapdoor into the heat and sunshine. 

“Marine!” a grin stretched across your face, the misery of the heat quickly disappearing. You waved and closed the trapdoor behind you, bounding across the clearing. It had been a while since you saw him last. You had started to get lonely. “You’re not hurt again are you?” he shook his head, tensing as you pulled him into a quick embrace. You worried you had made him uncomfortable, and an apology was on the tip of your tongue when a muffled sound came from behind his helmet. 

“You’ll have to take that off if you want me to understand you.” he reached up and removed the helmet with sharp clicks. In the sun he was even more beautiful, and the green in his eyes was so bright in the lighting it could have almost been described as emerald.

“You’re cold?” he sounded like he hadn’t talked since he last saw you. He tucked his helmet under an arm and reached out, brushing the rough pads of his fingers over the bare skin of your shoulder. 

“Yeah, I was down in my ice house.” 

“Ice house?” You grinned and pointed towards the trapdoor. 

“Yup, made that sucker myself.” He looked at you with something that could have been amazement or admiration. 

“How do you do it?” you looked at him and tilted your head. “Like, all this, how did you build it all?” you kind of understood what he was asking. A lot of people may not have made out quite so well. You flushed as you thought about the wealth of strange knowledge and how exactly it had accumulated. 

“Oh, well before the world went bad, I kinda got into a tight spot. Remember how I told you I was a problem child?” he nodded. “Well at one point I went off the rails, I failed out of everything because I almost never went to school, brewed my own moonshine, and ended up escaping from police custody both of the times that they managed to catch me. They never did figure out who I was.” you laughed a bit, scratching the back of your head. “I got sent away for a year, ended up on this farm in the middle of nowhere with this hard-ass old lady and nothing for a hundred miles in any direction.” You hadn’t thought about any of this in a long time.

“Eileen was a badass, she was like seventy and made all her own stuff. I wasn’t too cooperative at first. I had this chip on my shoulder and didn’t trust anything that moved; but I came around. She ended up teaching me just about everything I know, and also calculus because I stayed with her through that unit of school and she said that falling behind was for losers.” you looked back at him and grinned, a little embarrassed of your story. 

“Oh.” 

“Yeah, bet you never pinned little old me as a criminal, but I used to be a legend among the local cops, they never figured out how ‘that slippery bastard’ ditched the cuffs, and they never found that second police cruiser either. I wonder if it’s still there.” You had driven it into a vat of quicksand.

“I could actually see that, there doesn’t seem to be much you can’t do. It's not surprising that it extends to less than legal things.” 

“What about you?” You smiled softly as John, Jester, and Jack made their way over to investigate Marine. He immediately bent and picked up John, clearly playing favorites. “Any good stories from when you were going through puberty?” he looked up with a giddy expression, having just discovered that John was growing tiny horns. 

“No, I was the quiet kid in high school, joined up as soon as I turned eighteen.” You wiped a hand across your forehead, sweating again after your brief respite from the heat in the ice house. He must have been boiling in his uniform. 

“Well not all of us heroes can have a tragic backstory.” you winked at him. His eyes went wide and he tentatively smiled, a red flush on his cheeks. “I’m sorry, I seem to have forgotten my manners! Would you like a cold drink? That sun has a vendetta against me I swear! It made this day hotter than I am!” you laughed at your own joke and grinned at him. He looked at the ground. Nodding but not raising his gaze. You frowned a bit at that. 

“Just some water.” 

You nipped inside to fill him a glass and then popped back outside to the sight of him still staring at the dirt with rapt attention. 

“Something interesting going on down there?” he jolted and looked up. 

“Um, I…” he trailed off.

“You look really red, here sit down, drink. You must be dying in that uniform.” you urged him to sit in the cool grass. He went willingly, gently holding your goats so they wouldn’t be crushed. You flopped down next to him with far less care. 

“Here, drink up!” He took the glass and began to sip at it, you hoped he cooled down soon. “So what brings you down to my humble abode? Not that I’m not thrilled you’re here, its always a good day when you drop in.” You gave him what you remember being your most charming smile. 

“Well I-uh.” He fiddled with something at his side, and a pouch dropped out of one of the many compartments on his armor. “I just wanted to say thank you for last time and I remembered that you said that you ran out of everything but salt and- Not to say that the food wasn’t amazing last time! Um, I brought you this.” 

He dumped the pouch in your lap and began petting John a bit too enthusiastically, not enough to hurt him, just enough for the little goat to headbutt his hand. Marine settled to nervously glancing at you from the corner of his eye after that. 

You opened the little bag with confusion, and then delight as a dozen bottles spilled out. They were sturdy glass, each labeled with fancy script. Rosemary, Thyme, Crushed Red Pepper Flake, Vanilla Bean Pods, Rainbow Peppercorns- it was a whole collection of spices! They were the good kind too! The expensive ones that you hardly ever splurged on back when you could buy these things with money!

“You-” you trailed off looking at the bottles in your lap, to you, they were like precious gems, shining in the dappled sunshine coming through the trees. You looked up at him with wonder in your eyes, a smile so wide it was almost painful breaking out over your face. “You found Vanilla! Real Vanilla, and Pepper Flake, and- and is this Cumin?” You looked at the label and were overjoyed to find that it was. “Marine! Where did you even find these?” He seemed to perk up, no longer fidgeting with John in his lap. 

“I found a store that was still standing, when I was clearing it out I found some that weren’t broken. Do you like them?” 

“Do I like them? Do I like them? This is amazing! I love them!” You were so overjoyed that you lunged up to your knees, letting the bottles spill onto the grass. You wrapped your arms around his neck and hugged him as hard as you could, already thinking about what you were going to make with your new goodies. 

“Thank you so much!” you could hear the whoosh of his breath leaving him as you squeezed him with all your might, and his hands hesitantly rose to lay delicately on your back. John bleated happily from where he was sitting, not understanding why you were so ecstatic, but giving his best goat-grin in celebration anyway. You pulled away and rested your hands on Marines shoulders, with his hands still on your back and your knees straddling one of his massive thighs you were practically in his lap, but too occupied with your thoughts to be embarrassed. You had a brilliant idea.

“Oh! What’s your favorite food? I may not be able to make it perfectly but I’ll try my best! This calls for a celebration! A feast!” You laughed again and slid your hands up his neck to cradle his face between your palms. Before you could give it much thought you leaned in and pecked him on the cheeks. “Seriously anything!” His face was hot in your hands, and you barely heard his whisper past the frantic joy ringing in your ears. 

“Pasta.” 

Oh, pasta. That was easy! You could do pasta! You had made pasta! You made your own multigrain flour from the remnants of wheat and grain crops. Sure it wasn’t finely milled and it was so labor intensive that you tried to save it for special occasions but this WAS a special occasion. So special that you were breaking out the good stuff. It would take a while to make but it would be worth it. 

“Pasta it is!” you jumped from his arms and swept the bottles into your hands. Already making plans for spicy bear meatballs and carbonara. Would that work with goat cheese? You thought it would. Sure Italians everywhere would probably roll over in their graves at the pairing but tomato sauce didn’t feel like enough of a celebration and nuking the pasta with cream and egg felt luxurious and made your mouth water. You had like, one late watermelon left too, so you could let that chill and then cut it for dessert. You wondered if he minded dandelion greens as a salad. They were sort of bitter? They kind of tasted like arugula if you tilted your head while chewing them. No that wouldn’t work, you just ate the things for nutrients, it wasn’t like you could make dressing...or could you? The plan fell together in your head like a symphony. You had made apple cider last year, and a few of the jars had turned to vinegar before you could drink or store them. Now that you harvested the honey you could make a dressing out of vinegar, sweeten it with honey and add a sprinkle of salt and pepper, it would be simple, but worth it. You could add some walnuts and berries to that, keeping it light to go with your rich main dish. Watermelon for dessert would wrap things up nicely, at least until you hit him with your REAL dessert, peach season was over, but you had some of them frozen in the ice house. Baked peaches with cinnamon and honey over frozen goat milk would be a perfect finale to the meal. 

You heard a rustle from behind you and turned to see Marine standing from his place in the grass. 

“Oh no you don’t mister!” he jolted. “Where do you think you’re going?” 

“I thought I would help.” you shook your head and smiled at him. 

“Absolutely not, you deserve some rest. Besides, I'm gonna use your gift and how am I supposed to be a good host if you have to make me food with the gifts you brought for me.” 

He ended up sitting on a bear pelt, sipping cold water and snacking on carrots and some of your goat milk sour cream and wild garlic dip. It was like a worse version of ranch. You glanced over at him every once in a while from your spot on the slab of stone that you used as an outdoor kitchen (carefully cleaned before use) and were pleased to see that he was enjoying his time with the animals and occasionally sneaking one of the goats a carrot when he thought you couldn’t see him. You secretly smiled and went back to kneading the pasta. 

You ran into a roadblock. The meatballs you needed to make required fatty meat, and the best fatty meat that you had access to was bear meat. It was a little gamey, any carnivorous or omnivorous animal tended to have a bit of a musk to it, but the cheese, spices, and honey you were going to add would all erase that flavor and make it much more pleasing.

You had scavenged your bear meat from the results of three demons fighting a full grown grizzly. The grizzly had killed all of them, but had been wounded. You followed it until it dropped dead and found yourself with a pelt, six and a half feet of pure muscle to haul back to your ice house, and a surprising amount of emotion over the death of an animal that you could only describe as majestic. 

The problem was that the grizzly was too heavy for you to hang, normally you would actually hook ropes around the animal and hang it from the planks in your ceiling to prevent it from contaminating anything else, but the bear had been so heavy that you had broken it down and left it laying directly on a shelf of ice.

The direct contact with the ice left it frozen solid, more so than the hanging meats you normally used, and now that was biting you in the ass. Normally you would just hack away at it until you got enough off to work with it, but you needed a good hunk of meat damn it!...That came out wrong. You struggled for twenty minutes before you finally conceded. 

“Marine?” He looked up, trying not to look suspicious with the half eaten carrot in his hand extended toward Lottie, an orange-rimmed smile on her face. “Could you help me for one moment?” He slowly got up from his spot on the bearskin and started toward you.

“Come On down to the ice caps!” You joked, making sure the door was propped open, you knew the icehouse like the back of your hand, but even you weren’t going to hack blind at a bear carcass. 

“Wow.” you heard his gasp as you slid down the steps after him. He had to crouch in the room, and the space would just be getting smaller as you moved into the freezer. 

“Sorry for the tight squeeze, I didn’t really plan on having someone quite so tall in here.” 

“It’s no problem, I’m the one intruding.”

“Oh you could never intrude!” You opened the door to the freezer and the cold poured out. “It’s a little dark, but we should get some light from the door.” You slipped into the tiny room and walked to the bear on it’s ice shelf. “I need a piece of the backstrap, don’t worry, I remove the stuff on the outside before I cook it. I tried, but I can't get the knife deep enough.” A whirring sound kicked up behind you. “What was that?” you could feel him at your back, his breast-plate brushing your spine. 

“Sorry, the suit has heating.” there was a warm current emanating from him, you leaned back a bit. Almost thirty minutes in subzero temperatures had taken away the heat and had started to soak in. You were cold, and your fingers were red from handling a knife in freezing conditions. 

“It’s nice.” you stayed a little closer to him than was strictly necessary as you pointed out the parts you wanted him to cut away. He bypassed your sturdy hunting knife and instead let the blade you had seen last time slide out of his gauntlet. It sliced through the frozen meat cleanly, leaving a steak neater than any you had ever cut. “Oh that's not fair!” you glared. “It was a lot harder than that, I swear!” 

Dinner was delicious. He ate three servings of it and then doubled down for dessert. 

“Still hungry big guy?” you smirked at him from your spot besides him. 

“Naw, suits getting a little tight anyway.” You hummed, you had a great time cooking for him and catching up, but now that you were resting you felt disgusting from the exertion of the day. 

“Well if you’d like to get out of that suit then you could accompany me down to the river.” he choked on the watermelon he was polishing off. 

“Wh-what!” You laughed at him. 

“To wash off. Not sure about you but it was hot enough today to fry my brain and I could use a little refresh.” He refused to look at you. You frowned, remembering his reaction to your hug when he first arrived. “Hey look man, I’m sorry if the teasing makes you uncomfortable, you can just tell me to stop, I just get really excited to see you so I may go a little overboard.” 

“NO!” he reached a hand out toward you, but before it could make contact he hesitated, then retracted it. “I don’t mind.” 

“Well, tell me if you change your mind.” the sun was going down through the trees, by your guess you only had an hour of light left. Enough time for a quick scrub. You stood and brushed the dirt from your pants, offering your hand to Marine. “Well, come on.” 

He took your hand. 

You knew the path to the water by heart, you could probably walk it with your eyes closed. He wasn’t as adjusted to it, and tripped over a root immediately. He recovered and broke into a jog to catch up to you.

“Is that the soap that you hit me with?” He pointed at the bar, wrapped up in the bundle of cloth in your arms.

“Well, not exactly the same one, but from the same batch.” You stumbled a bit over the rock in your way, your vision impaired by carrying both of your clothes and towels. You had managed to scrounge up a shirt and a pair of really old sweats that you thought might fit him. You weren’t sure though. 

“Let me carry some of that.” 

“Wow, such a gentleman, how did I get so lucky?” You gave him his towel and clothes. “Careful not to drop these, they’re the only pair I have that might fit you.” You trotted onward, determined to make it to the river before it was too dark 

“Wait what?” He broke into a run to catch up, once again lagging behind. You didn't blame him, you had a ridiculous walking speed.

“What?” You weren't sure what he was asking.

“Only ones that will fit me?” 

“Well yeah it’s not like we’re the same size or anything.” 

“No I mean, I'm sleeping over?” You furrowed your brow. 

“Oh sorry, I just assumed that you were, I mean you helped me put up the extra hammock and all, you don’t have to stay if you have something urgent I just figured it would be easier.”

“No I would like to, really.” 

“Then let's get cleaned up!” you burst onto the river bank, eager to finally get the salt off your skin. Out of respect for Marine you left your underwear on, plunging into the river. 

“Ahhhh!” you let out an audible sigh and began to scrub your hands through your hair, gently cleansing your scalp. You soaped up your dirty shirt and used it to like a wash cloth.

The water here was clean and clear, though you weren’t going to drink it without thoroughly boiling it. The fast flow carried all the grime away and made you feel good again. A sloshing sound made you turn back to shore. Marine had joined you.

“The water’s great! Come on over!” you smiled, but felt the expression falling from your face as you took a moment to look at him. 

He had stripped down to his boxers, removing the armor and skintight suit underneath of it. In the setting sun he looked golden, and you could see the muscle in his arms and shoulders. He was built like a bus. Strong core, large thighs, and he had enough cake to satisfy Marie Antoinette. You yanked your eyes away. Feeling something stir in your stomach that you hadn’t felt in a long time. Attraction. 

“Here, make sure you use soap!” he was just the first person you had seen in a long time, that was all. You tried to make yourself believe that even as you lay awake in your hammock, listening to him breathe. You were so fucked.


	5. Pelts

It was bound to happen eventually. A demon had broken through your razor wire and after a fight that would probably make a WWE fan cry in joy you were left nursing a laceration in your stomach and another in your arm that was so deep you could see the bone. Speaking of bone, that same arm had snapped and forced you to set it, an agonizing experience that you hoped you would never have to repeat. 

You had finished harvesting your vegetables, smoked your meat, picked apples, and stored jars of lard and honey in your house. You had made fruit preserves, and your cellar was full of hanging rows of wild onions, potatoes, beets and anything else you managed to get your hands on. 

You had grain and hay stored for the animals, soap prepared, and a wooden soaking tub lined with a tarp so that you could heat water and scrub yourself clean with more efficiency than the sponge baths you had made-do with in previous years. You used to hate when it was hot, reasoning that you could always put on another layer, but you couldn't peel off your skin if the heat got to be too much. In the apocalypse however, the cold was far more of a threat.

The trees around you had gone all sorts of beautiful colors, bright enough that poets would write about them had there been poets alive. For you, it was a harbinger. You needed to be ready for the snow and ice, but even with tireless preparations, you were never sure if it would be enough to see you through to spring.

You had planned on chopping wood for the fireplace, but with one arm it was almost impossible. You settled for spending hours retrieving loose logs and branches, eventually growing your already sizable pile to something that could last through a short winter, if you were lucky. 

It was cold enough in the morning that you went out with one of your bear pelts wrapped around your shoulders, already looking forward to hot apple cider and some of the goat cheese and tomato quiche you had made the other day from the last jar of canned tomatoes leftover from the previous winter (you were trying to use up old stock before there was any risk of it going bad). The first task of the day was to milk Lottie. Now that the triplets were weaned, you could start collecting again. 

“Alright Lottie.” With a great deal more struggle than normal, you got her positioned over the collection pail and started milking her. Mindful not to nudge the pail with your bad arm, currently trussed up in a sling. This milk would get brought down to the freezer for storage, alongside all of the other frozen goods you had stocked. 

You lifted the pail with your good hand and began walking toward the ice house.

Now that you were up and moving, you quickly realized that you felt like garbage. Your whole body hurt, and the sloppy stitches in your side were tugging again, probably swollen. You were tired too, you felt like your eyes would slip closed at any moment. 

You sighed, there was too much to do to rest, you had to feed the chickens and gather more firewood. You had to finish building the extension to the goat shed. You had to...fuck, you had to figure out how to get liquid water to the animals, everything would freeze solid in the winter. In previous years you had individually heated it in buckets and carried it out to them, but with the new goats that might not be enough. You knew of a bamboo grove on the far reach of your territory (it was invasive, and nearly impossible to kill, it could even flourish in hell apparently), the large stalks could be repurposed as a kind of piping if you could cut them and get them back to your homestead. 

As you planned the water system, you swung open the cage to your chickens, collecting their eggs and laying the feed for the day. They came squawking out of their coop. All healthy and looking good. You had let two eggs hatch since the start of fall, more out of accident than anything else (you hadn’t seen the tawny eggs nestled in the corner until it was too late). They still looked like little puffballs, too young to tell the gender. As they pecked at their feed, another wave of exhaustion hit you. You pulled the bear fur tighter and shuffled to get your much anticipated breakfast. 

You were too cold. No, that wasn’t it. You could feel the heat cocooning around you but it wasn’t soaking in. You were shivering. You had eaten breakfast, but then...you thought you just sat down for a moment. You groaned as you moved. The shift caused the bear pelt to open for just a moment, and a blast of cold air swept into the tiny pocket of warmth. Your side ached. You dragged your eyes open and fought off your pain. You had work to do. 

It was hours later that you were able to go to bed. The sun was finally going down (having taken its sweet time all day) and you were able to put the goats and chickens away and head for your fur-lined hammock. 

A knock on the door woke you. Well, a pounding on the door. You groaned, rolling out of your hammock and almost crumpling to the floor. You wrapped the fur tighter around you, shivering in your soft sleeping clothes, and shuffled painfully to the door. You prepared to reach for the axe leaning by the wall, drew the deadbolts and cracked the door open. Just enough to peek out. 

“Oh thank fuck.” you squinted up at Marine.

“Wha?” a wave of shivers ran through you. 

“I was so worried, I couldn’t find you by the river, and Arnold was making so much noise and- is that blood.” you blinked at him, ridding yourself of the sunspots, was it really morning already? “Hey, did you hear me?” 

“Hmm...yeah, blood.” there was a brown patch on your shirt, right over the stitches. You remembered that you pulled them last night. Something finally clicked in your brain. “Wait, Arnold? Fuck I didn’t feed the animals this morning, I need to milk Lottie.” You pulled the door open the rest of the way and stepped out into your yard. Well, you tried to step out into your yard. Instead, you ran face first into Marine. Funny, you couldn’t remember him being there before. 

“You’re not going anywhere except back to bed.” He put his hands on your shoulders, lifting you like you weighed nothing and crossing your house in five steps. 

“But the goats need to be fed, and eggs, Lottie!” that didn’t even make sense to you, and you were the one that said it. You winced. You definitely had a fever, and you were in deep water if that fever was caused by an infection. You had done your best to clean out the injuries, but if it wasn’t enough you could go downhill real quick. 

He lay you in the hammock with careful hands, you still jolted when he set you down, panting from the exertion of your short trip to the door.

“I’ll take care of the eggs, and I will milk Lottie.” You forced a smile through the fever and your lips cracked. You were dehydrated. “I’ll get you some water.” He brought a glass to you and held it against your lips. 

“I can do this man, go let the animals out.” he laughed and made sure you were holding the glass steady before he left the house. “And make sure to lay feed for the chickens! Uncover the water ponds! Put Lottie's milk in the-”

“Rest, I’ll take care of it.” you sighed and watched him leaving, peeling back the furs once he was gone. Your shirt was damp from sweat and it stuck to the site where your wound broke open. Luckily it wasn’t swollen, and the stitches seemed to be holding, only the scabbing had cracked. You nestle back in the hammock and content yourself with sipping your water. You were a stubborn bastard, but you knew that you were sick. A day or two of rest would get you on your feet, if not back to a hundred percent. Your eyes were slipping shut before you could even think to put the glass down.

When you next woke your nose was cold and there was a mechanical hum in the air, similar to when you rested your head on the keyboard of your computer. You had fallen asleep with furs piled around you, but now you were positively swaddled. Marine must have tucked you in.

You wiggled to get your arms free, then lifted away the buffalo fur that had been stacked on top of you. The room was lit with yellow light coming through the window by your side. The hammock rocked as you peeled back the curtain and took a look. It was afternoon, and the sun was shining through the leaves of the tree that sheltered your home. Its leaves had changed to a vivid yellow as autumn crept in, and the sun made it into stained glass dapples on your lawn. 

You looked to the rest of your house. The fire in the wood burning stove had tuned to coals, and sitting with his back to a wall, a mechanical buzz rising from him, was Marine. He was propped in front of your door, his head on his chest and that huge gun of his resting across his lap. You smiled. 

“Hey Marine.” He was out cold. You eased your feet to the ground and padded over to him. “Hey.” you gently brush your fingers against his cheek. He was growing stubble. 

His eyes cracked open, gold and green. He drowsily brought his hand up to where yours was resting on his cheek, holding the touch closer. 

“Hey.” his voice came out scratchy. You smiled, he was cute when he slept.

“Hey.” his expression changed from blurry and happy to confused and sharp. 

“Wait, what are you doing out of bed?”

“Technically it’s a hammock.” 

“It doesn’t technically matter.” he stood, clipping his gun to his side. “Come on, rest.” he crouched and made to sweep you into his arms. You dodged, thoroughly enjoying yourself. That nap had done you a lot of good. “You slippery little…” he put his hands on his hips, feigning exasperation, then lunged at you. You dodged again. Holding your broken arm to your chest.

“Missed me!” he made another grab, you didn’t have anywhere else to run, so he easily looped an arm around your waist and pulled you into his hold without jostling any of your injuries. You huffed and he gave you a smug look. “You’re gonna get sick, see whos smug then.” 

“I can’t get sick.” 

“You’re kidding me.” he still had that same smug look on his face. “You’re not kidding me.” 

“I’m not.” You relaxed into his hold. Staring at him. “It was part of the soldiers medical alterations.” 

“Man, I could use some of those right now.” you gestured to your arm. “Had to set this sucker myself.” He held you closer to his chest. 

“How did that happen?” You sighed. You had known the question was coming. 

“Some mean mother fucker broke through the razor wire.” you gestured to your arm. “It had horns, one hit me right here-” you touched the blood stain on your shirt. “The other gave me a cut here and snapped the bone straight through.” You smiled up at him from your place in his arms. Snuggled against his warm chest-plate. “I totally kicked his ass though.”

“Yeah, bet you did.” You wrapped your uninjured arm around his neck.

“You’re warm.” You rested your head on his shoulder and looked up at him. “Mind taking me outside?” 

“You should be resting.” 

“Please? I’ll bring my Buffalo pelt, and I’ll just sit in the shade and drink water.” Even before he moved you knew you had won. 

“You have to eat too.” You grinned.

“Only if you sit with me. We can have apple slices and cinnamon.” he sighed, then reached across the room to grab the buffalo fur and the thickest of your bear pelts, holding you in the curve of one of his arms. You knew he was strong, but every time he did something like this you were reminded that Marine was just as capable of crushing you with those hands as he was of using them to hold you as carefully as he did. You felt that tug of attraction again, you couldn’t help it when he was so gentle with you. It juxtaposed how he fought everyday, and it made you feel special. Also his strength was hot. You were screwed.

“Deal.” He pressed his lips to your forehead for the briefest of moments, they were soft. He froze once he pulled away, but relaxed when you hummed and reached to pull the pelts over you, bundling yourself and the furs into his arms in one big, cozy pile. He walked out into the fall sunshine, holding you like the damsel in a romance movie. You took a deep breath of the fresh, crisp air. The broadleaf trees in your forest really were beautiful, even if the warm colors of the leaves meant that winter was closing in. 

“Fall is so pretty.” you were reminded of Halloween, you wondered for the first time in a long time what the date was. You had been out here for so long that the date didn’t really matter. It was just the seasons. In spring you had planting and hunting, summer was for tending, fall was the harvest, and winter was for filling the ice house and trying to keep all of your toes. 

He lay the bear pelt on the thickest grass in your lawn. 

“I’m gonna set you down.” You didn't want to leave the warm circle of his arms, but you reluctantly let go of him when he crouched and carefully lay you on the fur. The buffalo pelt was wrapped around your shoulders, he was careful to make sure that it wasn’t tugging at your arm, and tucked your foot back into the warmth of the cover when you shifted and left it in the open air. He was surprisingly attentive to the details. You almost sighed as he wandered away from you, though a small part in your brain commented that you were fond of the view from the back. You yank your eyes away and begin to stretch out the stiffness in your muscles, getting a satisfying crack out of your neck when you rolled your head. 

“You promised to drink. Here.” Marine was back surprisingly fast, he helped you cradle a mug of what you thought was water. Upon taking it into your hand though, you realized it was warm, and gave off the distinct smell of hot cider. 

“You found my apple cider?” 

“Saw it when I put Lottie's milk in the Icehouse.” 

“You heated it up?” you take a satisfying sip. Surprised and delighted to find that he added some of the cinnamon that he brought you. “Thank you.” 

“Figured it would be easier on you than whole apples.” You scooted over, leaving him a spot to sit beside you. 

“I’ll forgive you for the change in plans, but you gotta sit with me.” He gingerly sat on the very edge of the fur. You frowned. “Thought you said you couldn’t get sick.”

“What? I can’t.” 

“Then why are you all the way over there?” You placed your mug down and held the edge of the pelt up, looking at him expectantly. He carefully eased himself over. Holding himself stiff as you lay part of the fur over his shoulder and then leaned against him. You ignored the slight discomfort of his chest-plate and focused on the soft warmth coming from him. 

“Isn’t that uncomfortable.” 

“Hmm, no, the armor is hard but you’re really warm. Is it uncomfortable for you?”

“No, well-here.” there was a clicking sound as he released some of the clasps on his uniform and he gently lifted you off of his body so that he could remove some of his armor. His chest-plate and the gauntlet with its attached blade were placed in the grass beside you. “Is this better?” he sounded nervous. 

You slumped against his side, retrieving your mug. He was even warmer without the armor separating you, and he was soft. 

“It's perfect.” You felt him shift to better accommodate you, his arm coming up and slowly wrapping around your shoulders under the blanket. He smelled nice. “Thanks for coming today, sorry that I’m sick.” 

“It’s no problem at all, I’m glad I got to see you, and I got to milk Lottie.” you laughed, a lot quieter than normal. Too much motion would rip your stitches. 

“She gave you trouble didn’t she?” it was his turn to laugh, his thumb stroking along your shoulder. 

“I may have gotten more milk on the barn floor than in the pail.” More laughing from both of you. It was nice to have him there, even though you were feeling like shit. 

“When I get better I’ll show you how to do it right.” 

“I’d like that.” From your position with your head pillowed against his chest, you could hear his heartbeat and the deep rumble of his voice. It was relaxing and rhythmic. 

“Next time you come we can go fishing if the pond is frozen over, or head up to the mountains for a few hours, the leaves look really pretty up there.” 

“Did you know you can see the colors change from space.” You had heard that before, but you wanted him to keep talking about it. 

“Did you see it?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Can you tell me about it? What it was like?” you wished that you could stay in the moment forever. 

“Well, it started out with yellow…” 

You dreamt of the trees coming back from the fires. They flushed the country gold from outer space. 

Sometime during your nap you had practically crawled into Marines lap. Maybe he had pulled you there? You didn’t care. All that mattered was that you woke up with your head on his shoulder and his arms around your waist. One of his hands had come to rest on your thigh, large and heavy. You felt a lot better than you had earlier. You were also ravenously hungry. You huff out a breath and stretched. 

“Hey, how are you feeling.” You smile up at the man holding you. 

“Lovely.” You wrap a hand around his neck and cuddle up to him again. The roar your stomach let out a moment later effectively ruined the moment.

“Sorry, the fever’s gone, so I’m getting hungry.” He gave a chuckle and then, in a movement that made the butterflies in your stomach turn to tiny mobsters with sledgehammers on a mission to break kneecaps, he stood. He stood like you weighed nothing and even gave you a playful toss, carefully catching you without even jostling your sling. “Oh!” you let out a sound of surprise, your face burning. 

“Sorry.” 

“No!” you were smiling. “That was fun! Do it again!”

“I don’t know, your arm-” 

“Come on!” you encouraged him. “You can do it, I trust you!” He rolled his eyes, but threw you again much to your delight. He caught you without any trouble. Even though you were sick, it was the best day you could remember in a long time.


	6. Worn Boots

His hands were so large that they wrapped almost all the way around your thighs, you could feel his thumbs pressing into the soft skin on the inside of your legs. You hoped they bruised. 

“Come on big guy.” you goaded him, wiggling your hips temptingly. “Take me.” You smirked, watching as his eyes narrow and his touch becomes harsh. 

You could practically feel his gaze on you, so hot it was searing. You laughed as he pushed himself up to his knees from where he was crouched over you, pulling you into his lap and pressing his dick between your thighs. He liked your thighs, evident by the array of purple and red hickies that decorated the inside of them. You pressed them together, rubbing and coaxing sounds out of him that you wanted to taste. You did just that, claiming his lips and savoring the rumble of his groan. 

You settled yourself and spread your legs, letting him slip a hand downward and press his fingers against your entrance. His other hand rested on your hip, keeping you balanced and stroking gentle circles on your side in a way that was almost soothing. 

You had to prepare a lot to get you ready for him, he was big, very big, and thick enough that your fingers didn't touch when you wrapped your hand around him. The results of your foreplay were always worth it. 

You grew inpatient as he eased a third finger into you, checking to make sure that you were loose enough even though you had already been stretched when you were laying on your back. 

“Marine.” You purred. Feeling like royalty in the throne of his lap. 

His eyes immediately snapped to yours, paying rapt attention. You slid his fingers out of you and brought his hand to rest on your other hip. A thrill went through you when you felt him readjust his grip, holding tighter. His thumbs pressed into your hip bones. 

“Lay back.” 

He slowly reclined, following your order. That was a rush to the head, the fact that you commanded someone so powerful and he actually listened was exhilarating. You wrapped a hand around him and lined up, giving him a smirk as you slowly slid him in half way, clenching around every inch and watching as he struggled to remain still and wait for you to set the pace. You panted as you took him, holding yourself above his hips, then, you let yourself drop until you were flush with his pelvis. You gasped in tandem with him, suddenly so full. 

His hands went to his sides, fisting the blankets to maintain some sort of control even as his hips bucked, jolting you into the air. You laughed and leaned back, pressing one hand flat to his thigh so that you could hold yourself in that position and raising the other to your stomach where you could feel him seated inside of you. You pushed, letting him feel the pressure of your hand through your stomach. He liked that enough to reward you with a groan and a look of desperation that was too beautiful on him to ignore.

You lifted yourself again. You felt on top of the world in, but he would likely have you under him again by the end of the night. He had truly monstrous stamina, and it was rare that you could outlast him. 

You sat up, your hammock swinging wildly as you moved. What the fuck was that. 

“I am so screwed.” It had been a week since you had seen him last, and you missed him already. Some part of you wanted to contribute your sudden, fierce addiction to him to the fact that he was the only person you had seen in years. That was a thing right? People starved of human contact became infatuated with the first person they met? 

The more logical part of you knew that you would be attracted to him no matter what. It wasn’t just that he was breathtakingly handsome and fought for you and was unreasonably powerful (though that was a little of it). It was also how he interacted with your goats, and took care of you when you were sick, and stuttered when he was confused, and how his eyes watered at your spicy bear meatballs even though they weren’t that spicy. It was how he brought you little gifts, and was so gentle, and had weird knowledge from being a boy scout, and quoted video games, and hummed metal music when he thought you weren’t listening. 

You were far gone. 

You groan and roll out of bed, the chill of the air reminding you that winter was closing in. How long had it been since you first met him? Five months? You felt so comfortable around him already, it hurt when he was gone. 

You pulled on your boots, noting how they were starting to wear down. You may as well go out and start your chores, even though the sun was barely peeking over the trees. You weren’t going to get much sleep after that.


	7. The Scavenge

Snow. Snow used to mean days free from school, hot cocoa and cookies. Now it meant that you had to dry your socks over the fire and clear your lawn of ice to let your animals feed. 

Your plan with the bamboo didn’t work, you hadn’t had enough time to cut the stalks and get them back home before the freeze set in. That meant that several times a day you heated ice over hot coals and carried pails of water out to the yard so that your animals could drink.

Any misstep carrying water left your pants drenched and frozen to your skin, you had already experienced frostbite enough times to exercise extreme caution on your daily chores. 

When you weren’t carrying pails of water or making the trip down to the river to cut ice for storage, you were trapped inside your house, watching the snowfall through the single window and thinking about holidays that you would never get to experience again. 

Most of the time, you were able to stay positive about the apocalypse. You normally had so many chores that you couldn’t spare a moment to give it much thought. The winter was the exception to that.

You entertained yourself with playing in the snow occasionally, but sometimes the wet clothes took so long to dry that the few moments of joy you gained from it weren’t worth it. 

It was fun to watch the goats in the snow too, they moved through it in a way that you could only describe as ‘bouncy’. 

Most of the time the goats were in their shed, the snow got too deep after the first real week of winter for them to venture out.

That left you with three months with a lot of spare time to think. It was moments like those in which you remembered that everyone you had loved before was dead. You would never have another holiday, you would never have another meal with your friends, everything was gone. 

You kept your head down and moved forward.

One of your chickens died. A plump hen with a gold coat of feathers. 

You almost cried when you saw her in the snow, buried up to her neck. She must have gotten out of the coop the night before and hadn’t been able to make it back in. 

You plucked her feathers, carefully storing them to use later, you didn’t have a plan for them, but anything could be made into something. 

You debated a while on whether to eat the chicken, but ended up saving it with the reasoning that it would keep better than other sources of protein. You would save it for an emergency. 

That was a load of bullshit. You were saving it for Marine, for a pseudo-holiday dinner to share with him. If he ever came back. 

It had been a full month since you last saw him. A full month of being alone in your cabin with nothing to do but think about how he wasn’t there with you. No one was there with you. 

You made like a bear and slept as much as possible.

You were heating water for a bath when you noticed something moving out from behind your chicken coop. For a moment you dared to hope, but It was not Marine. 

It was one of THEM. 

It was sniffing around your clearing like it had some right to be there, a hulking brute with horns and grey skin. Normally you would be afraid, but this time…

You couldn’t wait to kill it. 

Some combination of seeing it so close to your home and the resurgence of brewing emotions that you had tried so hard to stomp down made you angry.

More than angry. You were furious. 

Your soaking tub was alongside your house, under the canopy. It was designed so that you could pack hot coals into the clay lined ‘oven’ you had dug underneath it. 

The materials you had used to assemble it were stored there, alongside the tools for repairing your barbed wire fencing. One of those tools was a pair of puncture resistant gloves. Gloves that would let you handle a glowing ember like a baseball. 

You slipped them on, grabbed a length of wire in one hand, and with your other, you picked the brightest piece of coal out of the fire. 

“HAPPY FUCKING HOLIDAYS!” you spun around the side of your house, gaining a clear line of sight to where the thing was investigating the feed you laid for your chickens. 

You probably set some sort of record with your pitch. 

The stick flew through the air, burning, and it landed right in that mean motherfucker's neck. The creature immediately let out a roar of pain, its hands scraping at its neck.

That wouldn’t be enough to take it down on its own. You followed your throw with a charge that bordered on reckless. 

You had gotten fast by necessity during the end of the world. You were inside its reach before it stopped pawing at the hot ash embedded in its face. 

You hit it with the length of barbed wire as it swiped at you. You had twisted your impromptu weapon into a loop before you threw your first attack, and the weight of the doubled-up wire made for a nasty whip. The blow was so forceful that the creature fell to its knees. 

You were surprised that it had been that easy, but you weren’t one to hesitate. You wrapped your length of wire around its thick neck and took off sprinting in the other direction. 

Your running start gave you enough momentum to effectively clothesline your opponent. It fell prone onto its back. 

You pressed the advantage. Your boots were worn but they were steel-toed, if you were to land a kick with one it could easily dent a skull. 

You booted that fuckers head like it was a soccer ball. A piece of its cheek became spontaneously airborne in a black-blooded spray and made a lovely ornament on top of the chicken coop. You lifted your foot and stomped on its thrashing head. 

The crunch under your shoe felt a bit like gravel, but some part of you knew it was bits of bone shattering. It made a satisfying sound. You changed your angle and began raining blows onto its neck, you kept up the assault even when it stopped twitching. With each stomp its esophagus became thinner. 

You didn't step away until its head was completely separated from its body. 

Endorphins were a powerful thing. They made you do things that you wouldn’t normally do. They made you pick up the severed head of the creature and walk it to the edge of your property. 

You drop-kicked it down the path to the river. 

You were panting, and you were realizing that you hadn’t gotten out of the encounter completely unscathed. You had taken a glancing blow to your shoulder, a slice was cut in your good jacket and when it was down on the ground it must have gotten a claw in your ankle. You felt the puncture throb as you stumbled back to the corpse. 

That had felt incredible. 

You stood over the body on the ground, victorious. The demon carcass smelled like rot already, they stank even when they were alive. If you didn’t dispose of it soon it would attract unwanted attention.

You wrapped your hands under its arms and began to haul the headless corpse off of your property. 

You dragged the creature onto the frozen surface of the river, far down current from where you collected ice. You didn’t want to risk any of the blood contaminating your supply.

You broke through the thinner ice in the center of the river, careful not to stand on anything that risked a tumble into the water crouching beside the body.

You were sweating under your jacket from the trip down to the river. The quarter mile slog through the freshly fallen snow had been a challenge, but it was a necessity. 

One of your strategies for survival revolved around scavenging any material that you could. You didn’t waste anything. Including the valuable things could be extracted from a corpse like this one. 

You drew your hunting knife and began to saw at its right arm.

The demons that invaded the earth were amalgamations of metal and flesh, they provided you with what you couldn’t make yourself. 

You got chains off of demons; blades, wire, tubing, screws, all things that you needed to continue building your life. 

You never wasted a corpse when one ended up on your territory.

You cut the demon into chunks, putting the metal bits that you sliced out of its skin to the side and dropping the mutilated pieces of flesh into the hole you had cut in the ice. The fish got a good meal out of it. 

You were only half way through the body when you had to stop. The creature had gifted you with a blade that you could only describe as a machete and enough hardware to build another barn on your property. 

You wanted to keep going but you were starting to feel the cold again, the warm flesh of the demon was cooling and your fingers were beginning to tingle and go numb. 

Its blood coagulated on your hands, dripping down your forearms. You wiped a hand across your forehead, cringing when you noticed that some of your hair had gotten soaked with sweat, and had actually frozen into spikes. 

You loaded your arms with the harvested material and started back up toward the house. 

You were halfway up the path when a sound like a bomb urged you into a run, the metal you spent so much time harvesting tumbled out of your arms, forgotten on the ground. 

It wouldn't normally be a challenge for you to run the distance from the river to your home, but your injuries, the cold, and the exertion of dragging your kill were all taking their toll. 

The temperature had been consistently sub-zero for weeks. The sun could barely be felt through the biting cold, breathing that air burned and ripped at your throat. 

By the time you got through your gate you tasted blood on the back of your tongue. 

You stopped. Just outside of your fence. 

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this.” 

Marine was there, crouched over the blood pool that the creature left behind. He was on his knees, gun by his side. 

A circle of snow had been melted away not far from him, probably from the blast that you had heard. 

He turned to the sound of your voice, stumbling to his feet. Neither of you moved. 

“It’s been a while.” When you were trapped in your house, you had thought that you were annoyed he hadn’t visited you. That had been wrong.

You had been worried about him. Worried that he was injured somewhere without anyone to help him, or worse, that he was dead. 

“You’re alive! I thought-I saw the blood and I thought I was too late.” you smiled, half hearted. 

“Naw, it would take a lot more than that to put me in the ground.” Seeing him again after so long hurt. It was almost physically painful. 

Oh fuck, you loved him didn’t you.

“Are you hurt?” He glanced at the bloodstain in the snow.

“It’s not mine.”

“You’re covered in blood.”

“I was harvesting the body.”

“You killed it?”

“Yeah.” The silence was painful. Under that much stress, something had to break. 

It wasn’t you.


	8. Soaking Tub

“I thought you were dead!” 

Marine crumpled. Falling back to his knees in the snow. 

“I couldn’t-If you were dead I-” You walked up to him and collapsed into his arms, shaking violently. 

He held you like you were going to disappear.

“You’re shivering.” He finally calmed down enough to notice that your teeth were chattering. The snow had melted and soaked through your pants, freezing the fabric stiff. 

“It's alright, I've got water heated for a bath.” 

“Let’s get you clean then.” He picked you up.

“I’m not sick, I can walk.” He just held you tighter. 

“Can I please carry you?” When he asked so nicely you couldn’t deny him anything.

“Yeah.” You would have flushed if you weren’t so cold. He carried you to the steaming water of your soaking tub, setting you on the edge. To your surprise, he knelt in front of you, untucking your pants and beginning to fumble with the laces of your blood-soaked boots. 

“I can do that.” 

“I-I don’t want to leave you, can I-” he cut himself off, seeming to deflate and leaning forward until his forehead was pressing against your knee. Your breath stuck in your throat at the sight.

“Marine? What's wrong?” you brushed your knuckles against his cheek. He lifted his head and looked at you. His face was rosy from the cold wind, the flush made his scars stand out. 

“I’m sorry.” 

“What?” 

“I was gone for too long.”

“It’s not your fault.” 

“But it is.” He lowered his gaze again. You realized that he wasn’t looking at you because he was ashamed. “I stayed away on purpose.” 

You stiffened. 

“What?” your voice came out as a whisper, your vision got blurry as you felt tears pool in your eyes. It was a punch to the gut. 

“Why!” You furiously wiped your face. Trying to pull your legs out of his grip. “Why would you leave me alone!” 

You wanted to wake up and discover that every wonderful memory you had made with him was just a dream. Anything to get rid of the pain you were feeling. 

“I’m sorry.” He put his hands on your knees, stopping your attempts to kick him away. “Every time I came here it was harder to leave. I thought that if I stayed away for a bit I’d stop-” his hands tightened.

“You thought what?” you glared at him, your face wet. 

“I thought I’d stop falling in love with you!” Your crying came to a hard stop, your eyes going wide. “I want to be around you all the time, and I want to touch you, and every time I leave it hurts!” 

“Marine?”

“But I couldn’t stay away, and then I saw the blood! I can’t lose you! There's no point in fighting if I don’t have you!” He was shaking. 

“Marine-”

“Don’t say anything. Just let me take care of you.” he swallowed audibly and looked up at you. “Please.” 

You cradled his head in your hands and coaxed him closer, tugging until he was kneeling between your legs. 

“Okay, please take care of me.” 

You leaned forward and kissed him.

It felt like worship.

When you pulled away his breath stuttered against your lips. You shivered, this time though, it wasn’t from the cold. 

He turned his attention back to your boots, removing his gauntlets so that he could pick at the laces until their knots came undone. 

He undressed you like it was something reverent. 

He took it slow, rubbing the circulation back into your feet and working your pants over your hips, he pressed the lightest kiss to the inside of your knee, a little too much like the dreams you had been having. 

His hands stroked the bare skin of your stomach, sliding to caress your ribs as he hiked your shirt up, remaining on his knees the entire time. You stayed still through it all, letting him explore every inch that he wanted to.

He finally stripped your body of its last clothes, sitting back on his heels so that he could take in your entirety. 

You knew you looked awful. Dark circles, scars, covered in the blood of your enemies clear up to your elbows...he looked at you like he didn’t see any of those. He looked at you like you had hung the moon for him. 

Your breath hitched as his mouth made contact with the center of your breastbone, directly over where your heart beat. His lips were hot, and as plush as you thought they appeared the first time you ever saw his face. 

“Is this okay?” you felt his baritone rumble where he laid his kiss. 

“Yes.” Your voice was breathy, soft. 

“I’m gonna put you in the water, tell me if it’s too hot.” 

“Okay.” He lifted you off the ledge and lowered you into the water, it steamed around you and licked at your frozen skin. You sighed. 

He stood besides the bath and started unlatching the clasps that held his armor. You watched serenely as he stripped. He really was beautiful, functional, muscle made for strength rather than show rippling as he placed his uniform carefully on the ground and refreshed the coals in the bath's heating system. 

When his under suit and boxers were finally disposed of he looked up, returning his attention to the bath. If love could be defined it would be by the way he looked at you. 

“I’m going to get in behind you, okay?” you nodded and moved forward, making room so that he could slide in and border you with his strong legs. It was a little tight, and water overflowed from the sides of the tub as he eased himself in, but you didn’t care. 

You could feel him shifting behind you. 

You glanced over your shoulder and found him holding a bar of soap. 

“Face forward.” He nudged your chin, and you dutifully looked away from him. He left the soap on the edge of the tub, lifting one of your arms with his sudsy hands and softly working the bubbles over your skin. 

He gently scrubbed at the dried blood until it flaked into the water, working his strong fingers down your arms and kneading at the wiry muscles, knotted from years of consistent physical labor on your homestead. He took his time to work the soap down each individual joint on your hands. 

He moved onto your legs next, pulling you into his lap so that he could reach around you. His arms were so long that he didn’t even need you to turn around. He pushed one leg upwards toward your chest, finding a particularly painful kink in the tendons of your ankle. You let out a hiss of pain and he paused. 

“Does that hurt?” You lean back into his chest. 

“It's good. My ankles are just stiff.” you could feel his hum against your back, his head dropping so that he could brush a kiss against the nape of your neck. He worked his way up your thigh, lingering a little longer than necessary when he washed the soft interior of your leg. 

At the feeling of his calloused fingers dragging across your skin you gasped, shakily inhaling. Your hands scrambled to the ledges of the tub, clamping down so hard they went white knuckled.   
He moved on to the next leg. 

“You lied to me.” Your head felt blurry, you were still thinking about the sensation of his touch. 

“Huh?” your breath was heavy. He was slowly stripping away anything except what was happening in the moment. 

“You said you weren’t hurt.” his thumb grazed the puncture wound above your angle, as he washed the blood away you were able to see that it had already scabbed over. 

“It stopped bleeding.” 

“That doesn’t mean you aren’t hurt.” He nuzzled into your temple, kissing down your cheek bone. He lingered on your jawline and pressed his lips leisurely against the curve of your neck.

“You should take better care of yourself.” Part of you wanted to argue that you did take care of yourself; you ate healthy, hearty meals and got plenty of exercise. The touch of his hands in your hair stopped the argument before you even made it. 

“I’m going to dunk you under.” you held your breath as he did just that, pressing until your head dipped under the warm water. He pulled you up with fingers threaded through your hair. You gasped, blinking. His thumbs wiped away the stray drops of water that threatened to irritate your eyes. 

You had known that his hands were big from the first time you met him, when he slammed you to the ground for trying to take out his knees, but as he worked lather into your hair and over your scalp, it hit you again. He did a lot with those hands; he fought for you, killed for you, took care of you when you were sick, carried you around just because he could. 

Suddenly, your chest was squeezing. You were grateful to him, you needed him.

“Marine?” Your voice was shaky.

“Hey, it’s okay.” his arms wrapped around your waist. He leaned over you, cradling you close. Your grip on the sides of the tub only got tighter. “What’s wrong?” 

“Thank you.” you choked it out. “I love you.” You finally let go of the bath, your hands flying to where his arms were roped around you and clutching at them. 

He held you tighter.

“I love you too.” he nudged your head to the side. “I love you.” His voice wavered a bit, but it was you that cried as he leaned down. 

It was a kiss that burned away the winter cold better than the hot water steaming around you.


	9. Greek Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Porn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will be edited as I improve. I don't have a lot of experience with writing things like this but I tried to keep it as gender neutral as possible.

He carried you into the house, careful to clean his feet before he walked through the door. He made to put your down in the hammock, but you stubbornly wrapped your hands around his neck and refused to let him go.

“You should get in bed, get off that ankle.” Your ankle was fine. 

“Where are you planning on sleeping? Are you staying with me?” His eyes snapped to you. 

“Of course I’m staying.” his voice had gone quiet, you knew that meant he was thinking about something that made him sad.

“Then lay out the pelts, we can dry by the fire.” He hesitated. “What’s the matter?” He sighed. 

“Remember last time I fell asleep with you?” Your head tilted, last time was your night under the stars. 

“Yeah.” 

“I got really close to hurting you that day.”

“But you didn’t.” You wiggled out of his hold, your feet touching the rough wooden flooring. “Besides, I wake up like that sometimes, and I know that I wouldn’t hurt you.”

“That’s different.” His hands went to your hips. He stroked his thumbs over the bones and sent a shiver through your body. You wished he would hold you tighter, like you were a person and not like you were a baby bird. “You’re a lot smaller than I am, and you’re not-”

“I’m not weak.” you placed his hands over his and pressed his fingers deeper into your skin. “And you didn’t hurt me last time, you were protecting me.” You released the pressure on his hands and cradled his face instead. “Please, can we sleep together?” 

His breath caught, his face flushed, and from your position close to his face you could see as his eyes dilated. 

“yeah-I-okay.” You grinned at him, reaching for the pile of furs on your hammock. Before you could gather them up, Marine swept you into his arms again. “You’re still hurt.” You cross your arms and huff in frustration, but a tiny smile works its way onto your face as he sets you in the hammock. 

“Get the sheets too, we’ll make a proper bed.” The red flush worked its way up his neck. You stifled a laugh into your hands. 

You instructed him to lay both of the bear pelts on the ground, having him cover them with the bottom sheet and topping that with the other, reserving the buffalo fur to cover you both like a duvet.  
“Don’t get up, I’ll wrap that for you.” You sighed. 

“It’s not bleeding anymore, I don’t want to waste materials.” He crouched by the hammock anyway. 

“I’ll find more and bring them back to you.” His arms were so long that he could reach across the room and retrieve your first-aid kit from where it was stored on the shelving along your wall.  
He bound your wound tightly, with expert motions. 

“Can you flex your foot in this?” You dutifully rotated your ankle and curled your toes, it hurt, but not nearly as badly as some of the other injuries you had in the past. You grinned at him.

“It’s perfect, like a dream.” You didn’t know if you were talking about the wrappings around your foot or the view. He looked like a demigod between your legs; but he was so pliant if you asked for anything. You wanted to test your newfound power. “Kiss it better?” He didn’t even hesitate, he lifted your leg up and pressed his lips to the inside of your ankle, his green eyes fixed on you, burning like Greek fire. 

Your breath stuck in your throat. 

“Marine.” Your gaze dropped. You hadn’t really taken him in fully before, you were pulled into watching his expression, soaking in the way he looked at you as much as you soaked in the hot water. You had known that he was hard, you felt him against the small of your back when he washed you. Now you realized that his dick was fully erect, and he was huge. 

Your stomach squirmed, a stampede running through you. You had dreamed about sex with him before, but even in dreams he wasn’t quite that wide or quite that long. You took a steadying breath. Part of you was a little scared, the other part wanted him to rearrange your guts. 

“Can you take me to bed?” you reached your arms toward him. 

“Of course.” he whispered the words, his hands shaking as he lifted you into his arms. You wrapped your legs around his waist, trapping his length between your bodies. It was unbelievably hot against your core and thighs. You cautiously rolled your hips. Pleased with the deep groan that he let out. “Do you-does that mean-.” he cut himself off. He had pulled back a bit to speak to you, and now his gaze was fixed on where he was pressed against the soft skin of your stomach, bordered by your strong thighs. 

“Does that mean what?” You smirked and squeezed your legs tighter around him. He rewarded you with another groan that rumbled through your entire body in a delicious way. “Does that mean I want you to make love to me?” His eyes immediately snapped back to yours. “Because I do.” at that moment it was all you wanted. You wanted to make him feel good. You wanted to be as close to him as possible (you wanted him inside you preferably). 

“but-I-.” You frowned.

“Do you not want to? I can wait until we’re both ready.” 

“No!” he looked down at you and gulped. “You’re just, really small.” his hands gave a squeeze around your waist, they spanned so wide that they almost wrapped all the way around. 

“Only compared to you.” You had been a lot smaller in the past, starvation had been a worrisome possibility during the first years of the end of the world. You had recovered to the point that, for others, you would be a normally sized person. 

“That’s the problem.” he muttered, still staring downward.

“Oh!” You shifted against him, taking note that he was still hard and showing no signs of being at all turned off by the size difference. “You’re worried about fitting inside me?” You purred, reaching down and wrapping a hand around him, or at least trying to, your fingers didn’t touch. You gave him a slow stroke, pleased at the reflexive clench of his hands. “We’ll prepare really well, and go slow the first few times.” 

“The-the first few times?” You pressed your chest to his, gently touching your noses together. 

“You think now that I’ve got you, I'm letting you go?” You answered with a kiss, finally bringing you to bed. 

You had to start with your own fingers, his would have been too big for the initial stretch. From the way he ran his hands restlessly over every curve you had, you could tell that sitting back and just watching was killing him. You worked your way up to three fingers before you gave him permission to touch you. 

“Okay, you can help now, if you’d like.” He jumped at the opportunity, grabbing your legs at the knees and dragging you toward him. You fell flat on your back. He pulled you until your legs were straddling his hips, your butt propped up onto his thighs. From his kneeling position, he had a direct view of where your fingers were still buried inside of you. 

He tugged your wrist away from your body, withdrawing your fingers and eagerly replacing them with his own. You moaned, it felt amazing when he touched you at all, but having him touch you like this was better by far.

“Oh that feels amazing.” He had curled his fingers inside you, they were much longer than your own, and he had no problem finding the spots you liked best. Suddenly, before he even got three fingers in, he was withdrawing from you. “What are you-OH!” He got out of his kneeling position and threw your hips over his shoulders, pushing your legs up toward your chest with a grip around your thighs that felt so good it burned. You dissolved as he put his mouth on you, his fingers going back to work. 

“Marine, that feels so good, you make me feel so good.” you panted out a string of praises. “I can’t wait to make you feel good too, can’t wait until you’re inside me.” your legs trembled as he got the perfect amount of suction, unintentionally clenching your legs around his head. He groaned, and the vibration was enough to send you panting. You barely realized he had three fingers in until he was drawing away, taking in the view of you lying on the sheets beneath him. 

“Can I-” you pushed yourself up until you were on your knees. Face to face with him. 

“Sit against the wall.” he scrambled to follow your instructions, not even bothering to put anything behind him to protect him from the rough deer hide that served as winter insulation. You crawled after him, grabbing a sheet to cushion his skin. “It should be a little easier like this, can I put you inside now?” 

“Please.” 

You straddled him with some difficulty, his thighs were bulky under yours. You lined him up, pressing the tip against your entrance and easing downward. For a moment you thought it wouldn’t fit, even after all your preparation, but with a tiny wiggle of your hips it popped inside. A loud bang made you jolt, Marine had slammed his hand into the ground hard enough to rattle the shelves, his other hand was fisted in the sheets. 

“Marine.” He looked up at you, dragging his eyes away from where his gaze was fixed on where you connected. “You can touch me, it’s okay.” You turned your attention back to taking him inside of you.  
As soon as you gave him permission to touch you he was trying to get as much contact as possible. He grazed his fingertips over your nipples, tweaking them. He leaned forward and planted kisses on your neck, biting when the sensation caused you to squeeze around him. 

“Sorry.” He started to take his hands off of you. 

“No.” you grabbed them and put them right back where they were. “I like it.” You bit your lip and took a deep breath, relaxing enough to slide the rest of him inside you. You were so full that you had to take a moment to adjust, your legs trembling. “Oh that-that's big, you’re so big.” Just like you had in your dream, you pressed a hand against your stomach, you could feel the swell of him inside you.  
“Can you-” you looked up into his greek fire eyes and felt him twitch inside you. “Can you feel me, like that?” You smiled and took his hand, pressing his palm where you could feel the length of him. He groaned. 

“I’m going to move now.” You did just that. It was slow, it had to be, but that didn’t matter. 

You started breathing heavily as soon as he was seated in you. It felt amazing, and it was made even better because he was there, tangible in front of you and looking at you with such deep tenderness.  
“I love you.” at the words his hips bucked, and you let out a sound that was somewhere between a yelp and a moan. You dropped, taking him all in one go and nearly blacking out from the impact. You rode him with more vigor, bracing your hands on either side of his head so that you could roll your hips with more force. 

“I-I’m sorry.” you wondered why he was apologizing. 

“Why are-” the breath left you as he pushed off of the wall and slammed you to the ground. You cried out, but didn’t have much time to process anything before he was pressing even deeper inside of you. He lifted your hips clear off the sheets, his hands like a vice on your hips as he moved. The first thrust punched the air out of you, the following ones rocked you like the ocean waves and left you with nothing to do but cling on for dear life. 

He finished inside of you, warm. The sensation was such that it pushed you over the edge, your vision flashing as you came. 

He rested his elbows on either side of your head, breathing heavily. 

“Are you okay?” be brushed your sweat-soaked hair off of your forehead. 

“I’m great.” Your voice was dreamy and light. “That was amazing.” His thumbs brushed against your hips, then stilled entirely. If it wasn’t for your legs around his waist he would have left you laying on your back, cold from the lack of his body heat. “Marine? What's wrong?” You held him tighter. 

“I-you have bruises.” he returned his hands to your hips, laying his fingers in line with the bruises that lanced over your thighs. “There too.” his hand brushed against the bite on your neck, hot and throbbing after the adrenaline worn off. You gave him a dazed grin. 

“Marine, I like it.” His eyes grew lidded, his gaze heavy on you. “Give me something to remember you by when you’re gone.” you ran your hands over the marks, feeling the heat they were giving off. “I like being marked by you.” At your words you felt him twitch inside you, and you realized that despite having an orgasm only a few moments ago, he was already hard again. No, he had never gone soft at all. 

He sat up, bringing you into his lap. Your thighs burned from the strain of exertion already. 

“Can we do it again.” he bounced you a bit in his lap, pressing against all of the right spots inside of you. You gripped his biceps desperately. 

“Y-yeah, lets go again.” 

His eyes ignited, once more, into Greek fire.


	10. Chores

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Idea for the question asking scene was left by a reader, feel free to leave your own suggestions

You woke up slowly, stretching and then wincing as you realized just how sore you were. 

It was a good burn. 

Marine was still sleeping, flat on his back with his hands wrapped around your waist, keeping you pillowed against his chest. His dick was still buried inside of you. 

When you were both finally satiated last night, you had fallen asleep where you lay: directly on top of him. 

You slowly untangled from his hold, wincing as he slid out of you with a wet sucking sound. A warm dribble immediately started, he had left quite a lot inside of you. 

You slid on a loose, threadbare pair of pants. Your hips were stiff to the point that you could barely pull them on. Your most worn, most comfortable long sleeve shirt followed, gaping over your collar bones from how stretched the collar was. 

You limped a bit on the way outside, slipping on the pair of boots by your door without bothering to tie the laces. You let out a curse as you realized that a fresh coat of snow had fallen, at least a foot and a half of powder that would make moving around next to impossible. 

You stoked the fire and swept out the oven under the tub, refilling it with coals so that it could begin to melt the layer of ice that formed over the dirty water from yesterday. 

Once the water was warm, you would begin sluicing it out of the bath, then you would heat snow so that you could clean yourself and Marine could freshen up when he woke. While you waited, you shoveled the chicken coop, the exertion of your tasks and the powerful sun overhead keeping you warm even in your thin clothes. 

When you finally finished shoveling, you wiped a hand over your forehead and plodded off to get the feed, but you froze when you saw that Marine was leaning against the door frame of your house, watching you fondly. He had tied a sheet around his waist, and his bare chest was steaming in the crisp morning air. He really was hot (in more ways than one). 

You felt a smile grow on your face, you felt like the luckiest person in the world when you looked at him. 

“Hey big guy.” 

“Hey.” You slogged through the snow, breaking a path back to your porch. Once you were in reach he pulled you to his chest, kissing you silly. 

“Eggs for breakfast?” His fingers hooked under your collar, tugging at the loose fabric. 

“Mmmhm, goat cheese and tomato please.” he lifted the fabric aside so that he could pepper kisses onto your neck and collarbone, his stubble tickled. “I really like this outfit on you.” 

“It’s a shirt with holes in it.”

“It’s sexy.” He pressed his lips to the bites he had left last night. 

“Cause you can see how marked up I am.” 

“No, makes you look soft, wanna hold you like this forever.” You laughed. 

“You’re talkative when you’ve just woken up.” he hummed and turned his head more fully into your neck, lifting you off your feet with a tight hug. 

“Cause I’m not overthinking, wanna tell you all this now while i’m brave enough.” You felt your heart turn to mush and you took his face in your hands. 

“You’re always brave.” you kissed him, soft and sweet. “I’m gonna heat some water to clean up and wash the sheets. You just sit tight inside, I think it snowed over your armor.”

“I wanna stay out here with you.” You laughed. 

“It's too cold for that.” He actually pouted at you. “I’ll bring your stuff in so that it can dry, you’ll be out here with me in a jiffy.” 

“Half a jiffy.” He was so cute. This gigantic doom marine was so cute that you felt yourself going mushy.

“You have to at least wait for your clothes to dry, and you should clean up too.” You certainly needed a wash, the insides of your thighs were sticky when they rubbed together. 

“Mmmmm” He kissed you again, not letting go until you wiggled out of his hold.

“Go, I’ve got to feed the chickens.” 

“And me?”

“And you.” You grinned at him, sliding around the side of the house to get the feed for the day. As you bent to pick up the bag you winced. You hadn’t been sore there in a long time. 

“Is this what you’ve been doing all day?” You finished up the chores in about an hour, just like you did every day in the wintertime. Soon after, the early morning sunshine and milder weather had ended with the arrival of a bank of clouds and a brief winter storm. That left you and Marine trapped inside, naked after your latest round of activities and sipping on cider to replenish your electrolytes

“Well yeah, now that the ground is frozen over there's nothing I can do but sit inside.” his hand was on your shoulder, drawing circles. He didn’t seem to be able to stop touching you, not that you wanted him to. “Sometimes I lay traps or go hunting, but only if I’m running low on food, and I’m stocked up right now.” It was normally far too dangerous for you to venture out into the cold.

He gave you a cheeky grin and rolled, pushing you back into the blankets and hovering over you. His body made a warm cage that you would gladly be trapped in for the rest of your life. 

“Good thing you’ve got me here now to keep you company.” You smirked and brought your leg up, rubbing your thigh against him. He groaned. 

“You should totally build a sauna.”

“Is this really the time to talk about this?” 

“I could do this all day, you saying that you can’t hold a conversation?” That was a challenge if you had ever heard one. 

He was holding you against the wall, leisurely fucking you for the third time that day. You wrapped your legs around his waist and held yourself flush to his pelvis, making it nearly impossible for him to thrust. 

“Hey!” he blushed all the way to his ears “that’s not fair!” He should have known better than to trigger your competitive side. 

“Storm’s stopped.” You pulled on your boots. “I’m gonna head down to the river, I've got to pick up my scavenge.”

“Your scavenge?” He started dressing in his uniform; it had long since finished drying by the fire. 

“Yeah, the metal from the corpse of that thing I killed yesterday. I was halfway through harvesting it when you blasted a hole in my lawn.”

“Harvesting?” 

“Well they have metal in them, I can’t afford to waste anything so when one comes my way I break them down and-you know- harvest them for parts.” He gave you a hard stare. 

“How do you harvest them?” You suck your lower lip into your mouth and begin to chew on it. He had a look on his face like he was dreading the next words that came out of your mouth. 

“Well I drag them down to the river and I-well I butcher them.” You lifted your arm to scratch at your neck. You weren’t expecting this reaction. “I cut them apart.” Silence, the kind that lingers when something terrible has been revealed. 

“You had to do that?”

“Well yeah, I can’t exactly go to the store and buy things anymore, did I do something wrong?” When you asked he just shook his head and finished pulling on his armor, he didn’t seem to want to look at you any more. 

You were more emotional than normal when you collected the scavenge you had dropped earlier, acutely aware of Marine following behind you as you loaded your arms full of frozen metal. He was being quiet, but not in the way that he normally was. You picked up the last of your scavenge and turned around to see him staring at something in the snow. 

“Hey, what are you-oh.” he was staring at the severed head that you had kicked down your path. You forgot that it was there. “Look that-that was a fluke I don’t normally kill them…” He looked up at you and pinned you in place with his gaze. “...that violently.” Why did he seem so angry?

“It’s not that.” His gaze didn’t soften “I really hate that you had to fight these things at all, it makes me mad that they hurt you and you had to-to-fucking dissect them! I wish that they never touched you at all or spilled their blood on you.” You relaxed. 

“Wow. You had me scared for a second there big guy! I thought you were mad at me. You could have told me that before.” He tore his eyes away and glared at the horns of the creature sticking out of the snow. 

“You’re not weak, obviously” he gave the head a kick, sending it skittering down the icy slope of your path. “I didn’t want you to think I saw you like that.” You started back up the path with your scraps.

“Well I guess I can understand that, but you never said I couldn’t do something or that I shouldn’t do something, and you didn’t insist that you should do my work for me; you just said that you hated that I had to do it.” You shrugged at him. “Sounds to me like you just want to protect me from the nasty stuff, but you understand that you can’t necessarily do that.” 

“Is it okay that it bothers me when I’m not able to do that?” you held your scrap in one arm and took his hand with the other. 

“Well,” you began, walking away from the severed head in the snow. “Do you think you should do everything for me?” 

“No.” 

“Do you think I’m incapable?”

“No.” 

“Do you want to take me away from the world?” He sighed and intertwined your fingers. 

“Sort of.” You squeezed his hand and waited for him to gather his thoughts. “I want to take you away from this one, into a better place, one were you can make all the wonderful things you’ve built because you want to make them, not because you have to.” You smiled up at him. 

“I would like to be able to drive to the hardware store for all this stuff.” you jostled your haul of metal. “But if it wasn’t for the world we have now, Arnold and Lottie would have never met, we wouldn’t have the triplets.” He laughed.

“I thought you were going to say that WE would have never met.” You grinned. 

“That too.” He pulled you close and lifted you into a kiss. 

“Can we have sex in the snow?” You pecked his lips. 

“Only if you can keep me warm, big guy.” 

You dropped the hardware into the ice as he swept you up and kissed you so hard you felt your back arch. 

“Fuck.” you panted into his mouth, reaching for your shirt. 

“Keep it on.” he took your reaching hands in one hand and pulled them away, trapping them between your chest and his armor. 

“You’re a little bossy today.” you tugged at his grip, your mouth going dry when you realized that he had you restrained. You liked your lips. 

“I told you, it’s sexy.” 

“Not as sexy as you.” You grinned cheekily at him, he responded by taking two steps forward and pinning you against a tree, the hand that was restraining you moved to hold your arms over your head. 

“Much sexier than me.” Part of you wanted to laugh, the other part was too focused on the chill of the treebark through your shirt and the cold metal clamping around your hands. 

“Not a chance.”

“Trust me, if you could see yourself like this you would agree with me.”

“And if you could see yourself with your head between my legs you would agree with me.” His grip around your hands got tighter. You wiggled your hips and tapped your heavy boots against the armor plating his back, smirking. “You do look so good between my thighs, you leave such pretty marks on them.” Your voice had begun coming out as a purr with your dirty talk. “And the way you look at me with those eyes of yours, like you’re starving and I’m the only meal that will satisfy.” you lean forward towards him, still held captive. The way he looked at you was indeed very similar to how a drowning man looked at the water's surface. “Sometimes I want to tie you up and see if I can get you hungry enough to break the chains.” 

“Fuck.” his hands released yours and you became airborne for a moment, when you finally stopped moving you realized he had slung your legs over his shoulders and lifted you high against the tree, you were seven feet above the ground and he was mouthing at you through your pants. Adrenaline flowed through you at the height. “Can I eat you out? Like this?” High in the air as you were, you had a lovely view through the trees, the sun glanced off the snow in glimmering rainbows and white light. Without the normal foliage you could see clear down to the frozen expanse of the river. The best view by far though, was the way he looked between your thighs. You hadn’t lied when you said he looked good there. 

“Yes please.” He put a hand under your butt so that he could tug your pants down, once they got to your knees he slid his head between your legs and started nipping and sucking, his hands kneading at your ass. “Fuck.” you let your head drop back against the tree as he finally laved his tongue over your entrance. 

Marine was steaming. You could see his bare arm pressed against the tree as he pounded into you, your hips rocking back against every thrust. Steam was curling off of his skin, visible in the cold, dry air. He was letting off enough heat to keep you warm, just as he had promised, not that you needed it. The vigor of your pace was testing your endurance and you were sweating. It may as well have been summer for how much you felt the cold. 

He wrapped a hand around your waist and lifted you clear off the ground, your boots dangling above the snow. You yelped and your hands scrambled for purchase. You couldn't reach the tree from the new position, so you had to settle for grasping onto the arm that was stemmed against the bark and twisting your hips to help him get a better angle (and avoid feeling like you were just a fleshlight and he was doing all the work...although).

He let out a deep groan and brought you out of your thoughts, you had been holding his arm so tightly that your short nails bit half moons into his skin. He seemed to like it, that was certainly a discussion you would have to have later. 

‘Later’ ended up being as you served him dinner, it was buffalo steak in a creamy onion and puffball mushroom gravy over pasta (yes you did make pasta specifically for him again-no one was there to judge you!). He always looked so excited over your meals.

“I feel kinda bad that you always do all the work when I come over.” You snorted and piled his plate high with food. 

“I wasn’t the one doing the work earlier mister.” You gesture to the collar of dark marks wreathing your neck. He blushed. You served him his plate and sat across from him. “Speaking of, we haven’t really talked about it.”

“About what?” He talked with his mouth full, and he practically inhaled the food. 

“About sex, you know; likes, dislikes...a safe word.” He blushed and choked on a mushroom. 

“I-thats-!”

“Important to talk about, don’t tell me you’ve never had this discussion with your other partners.” He looked down at his plate and started chewing a lot slower, almost like he was avoiding having to talk. “Marine?” 

“I haven’t really had another partner okay.” You would like to say you reacted normally to that, but your jaw hit the floor. 

“You’re kidding?” the red flush crept up his neck and he took a long pull of water. “You’re not kidding.” You ran a hand through your hair, fuck. “You’ve never had sex before?”

“Not before you, I don’t normally feel attracted to people in that way, you were the first person I ever really wanted to have sex with.” It was your turn to blush and you let out a startled laugh. 

“Sorry if I seem so shocked, it’s just that-you’re really good in bed. I figured you had experience.” You both stared at each other, you cracked a reluctant smile, and then all at once you burst into a fit of chuckling. He followed suit. 

“We are really bad at this aren't we?” He grinned at you. “I don’t even know about relationships and now I’m supposed to have one in the apocalypse?” 

“This is a shitty rom-com.”

“One of those terrible soaps.”

“A really bad dime novel.” 

“A bad fanfiction.”

“You read fanfiction?” 

“Not bad fanfiction.” You laughed. Sharing the sentiment. “Hey, can I ask you something?” 

“Only If I get to ask you something back.” He nodded. 

“Fair enough.” You looked at him expectantly and picked at your plate. “What’s your favorite color?” it was so unexpected that you almost choked on your pasta. 

“Really?” 

“Yes, that was your question by the way, I get another once you answer.” oh he was sneaky. 

“It’s green.” 

“Why?” 

“That was your question! No take backs!” You took a deep breath “it sounds cheesy, but it really is because of your eyes.” 

“You mean these ‘glimmering orbs’.” 

“I swear if you start quoting that stupid fanfiction I will never make you pasta again!” You were laughing harder than you had in a long time. “It was so awful!” You both looked at each other, and you burst back into laughter when he mouthed ‘shimmering pools’ at you. “Alright, alright!” you finally calmed down, gasping for air. “How old are you?” 

“Twenty six.” You did the math in your head. He wasn’t even old enough to drink when this happened. “What’s your favorite food?”

“Honestly? Whatever I’m craving. It’s um-chocolate a lot nowadays, but it’s not like I can pop to the store and grab a bar anymore. Some days I can almost taste s’mores by the fire.” your mouth was watering just thinking about it. 

“Is there anything that you want to avoid during sex?” 

“Loud sounds, and I don’t think I’d like you telling me bad things, no degradation please.” he wrung his hands, his plate almost empty by now. “Is there anything you want to avoid?” you thought about it, you were a pretty open person, but the end of the world changed a lot. At the beginning of the end, the air around you had scorched, it had been poisonous to breathe. You still had nightmares sometimes. 

“No choking please.” You thought back to the groan he had let out from the nails in his arm. “Is there anything you would like to try?”

“Umm, yeah. That time in the snow, you mentioned t-tying me up. I liked the nails too, scratching and biting.” You nodded. You had kind of figured those would be on the list. “What about you?” 

“I’d love to tie you up, I don’t mind the taste of you either, so taking a nibble won’t be much of a problem.” You winked at him, then thought a little. “I like your marks obviously, and I like it when you show off how strong you are, lifting me up and stuff.” you couldn't think of anything specific outside of that. “I liked having sex outside.” it was quiet for a while. “What did you do before the marines?” 

“I joined right out of highschool.” 

“No, I mean what did you like doing.” 

“Oh, video games, music, I used to play guitar and bass.” he looked down at his hands and wrung them together, you scooted next to him and slipped your hands into his. He ran the pads of his thumbs over your hard earned callouses. “I was only ever interested in music and fantasy, when I told my parents that was what I planned to go to college for they...didn’t take it well. I ended up going into the corps because I didn’t know what else to do.” 

“What kind of music?” He perked up. 

“Heavy metal.” 

“Is that what you’re always humming when you think I'm not listening?”

“You have had far too many questions!” He was smiling again, you hoped you would get to see him happy everyday until he got sick of you. “Why did you settle down here? You could have gone south for warmer weather, you wouldn’t have been snowed in all winter long.” 

“There’s less disease, less poisonous things, and honestly?” you took a moment to gather your thoughts. “When I settled here I had gone as far as I could, I was starving to death by the time I managed to get here. There was only this house, nearly falling apart, so I crawled in here. I thought that it was as good a place to die as any.” his hands tightened on yours, bordering on painful. “Then a chicken pooped on me from the rafters and I realized that there was a meal waiting right above me.” You grinned. “Built this place from there.” He let go of one of your hands to touch your face. 

“What would you be doing if this never happened?”

“I’d still be trying to convince my girlfriend to move out to the countryside with me.”

“You had a girlfriend?” He started to pull away “does that mean-”

“I like guys too silly.” you grabbed his hand and pressed your cheek against it “besides, she ended up joining a cult and tried to sacrifice me to god.” you shrugged as if you didn’t wake up some nights smelling the burning of her previous victims, wondering when it was going to be your turn. “You’re definitely an upgrade.” 

He wrapped a hand around your waist and pulled you into his lap. 

“I swear, if I ever see her…” he let himself trail off, the threat hanging in the air. 

“I’d pay to see that.” you pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Your turn, same question.” 

“I’d be on a deployment, three years, probably Mars bound. I used to have this rabbit, Daisy. She would still be alive and I would still be teaching my company how to hold her.” His fingers danced down your back, tracing your spine. “I’d still be living in government housing and I would have never known anything like this.” You wrapped your arms around him and pulled him close. 

“I like to think we would have met each other, one day.” He buried his face in your neck. “I love you.” 

“I love you too.”


	11. Ramshackle Huts

_ “When will you next be back?” Marine had a star shaped scar on his right hip bone, a happy trail that was a lot darker than the hair on his head, and stretch marks.  _

_ You loved his stretch marks, silver in some places and cool purple in others. They danced vertically across his thighs and the soft fat around his middle, but the ones on his back were horizontal. He told you they were from a particularly painful growth spurt. You pressed a kiss to your favorites, the ones right under his belly button that were so interlaced they looked like lightning bolts. _

_ “Miss me already?”  _

_ “I wanna make holiday dinner.” He ran his hands through your hair, drawing gentle circles on your scalp. “Takes all day to make, so I have to plan ahead.”  _

_ “Five days is probably the soonest I can make it back.” you hummed and resumed tracing his scars. “Hey.” he tugged at your hair, pulling you onto his chest so that you were face to face. “You know that I would spend every day here if I could, right?”  _

_ “I know, but you’re out there saving the world.” you leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “As long as you come back to me eventually, I’ll be okay.”  _

_ He wrapped you up in his arms.  _

_ You basked in his warmth until you felt his finger tease your entrance. Rough against the delicate rim.  _

_ “Can I put it in? I want to bounce you. You wouldn’t have to move at all. I could do all the work.”  _

_ You were sore in places that you had NEVER been sore, you honestly didn’t know if you could go again...but you certainly wanted to.  _

_ “Yeah, let’s see what you’ve got big guy.” _

For some reason, all you could think of while your world burned down around you were the last moments you had with Marine. 

You panted at the edge of your clearing, looking back at the crowd of people setting fire to the buildings you had worked so hard to build.

People. Not creatures, not the demons that you worked so hard to fortify your home against. It was humans that were burning it down, clad in Kevlar uniforms and bearing an insignia of something you recognized. 

The cult your ex-girlfriend has started must have gotten a lot bigger than you thought was possible.

You could hear Lottie screaming from the barn as she burned, Arnolds body sprawled in the snow where he had died trying to protect his family. 

You didn’t had time to do anything but grab your emergency bag when you heard them coming, you had to leave your goats and chickens to die. 

You turned away from the scene before you ran into gunfire in an attempt to save your animals and sprinted into the woods, the screams behind you and the roar of the fires providing the music to your escape. 

Frozen and starving was how you remembered yourself to be at the beginning of the end. When you chose to leave what humanity had become and find the definition for yourself.

You were loathe to find yourself returned to that state. 

The first priority you had was finding shelter. Most people thought that finding water was the first thing to do when you were stranded, but survival always came in order of what would kill you first.

You could go with very little food for two months (a limit you had pushed before and did not want to stray near again), without water you would die in two days, and if you didn’t find shelter exposure to the winter’s cold would have you dead in a handful of hours. 

You were dead meat as soon as the sun dipped below the horizon. 

The good thing was that you were wrapped in your warmest furs and were surrounded by one of the best insulators in the natural world. 

Snow.

Snow trapped air, using packed snow as an insulator you could make a shelter that would save your life, though it wouldn’t be comfortable. 

You dug sticks out of the snow, stacking them to make a lean-to structure. Dead leaves went over that, and snow made up the final layer. As you worked, you pushed down the vomit of emotions (and the literal vomit) that burned at your esophagus. 

You didn’t have time to grieve, you had to press forward.

Cold, wet, and hungry. That was how you woke up. 

You (once again) pulled yourself together and took care of one thing at a time. 

A great way to stay warm was just to keep moving, Eileen used to say that you couldn’t die if your were moving. So you crawled out of your hut and made a beeline for the river. 

The river was frozen over, but in your emergency pack you had a hatchet and a metal wedge. 

You broke a hole in the ice, the pulled out one of your containers, made with the a bear stomach. 

Water coming out of it always tasted funny, and it grossed you out a little to be knowingly drinking from an organ. But it was foldable and held water, so you carried it in your emergency kit.

Another great advantage to the flexible little water bag was that you could press it against your skin and allow it to warm up. Drinking cold water in the summer was just fine, but in the winter you needed every ounce of your energy for heating, and cold water in your core would chill you more than the bag against your skin. You slipped your entire emergency bag (waterskin included) under the furs and started preparing a hut on the thick ice of the river. 

Time to see how hungry the fish were.

The fish were very hungry, and you managed to gather enough of them to feed yourself and work up a little stockpile. You were still hungry most of the time, but you didn’t have time to get comfortable and fill your belly.

Two weeks in you realized that you would have to move again. You were still too close to your old homestead, and that meant too close to the cult. 

You headed out on a clear morning, following the frozen river upstream. That night, you built another ramshackle hut in the snow.

Traveling up the mountain had been a risk, but it had paid off. 

There was a lot of food on the slopes. Fish in the river, squirrels that you dug out of their hollows and leaf houses, frozen acorns that you soaked and roasted in the coals of your fire, cattail roots that lined the lakes and tasted starchy and almost like a potato if you squinted and chewed them with your head at an angle. 

You were still hungry a lot, but you settled on a hill for your new home and mustered the energy to get up and start looking for logs so that you could begin building. 

Springtime brought relief. It was no longer bitterly cold, and the earth became soft enough for you to build a new ice house and fill it before the river melted all the way through. 

You treated the pelts you had saved from from the animals you ate in the winter, made a thick blanket, and built a hammock. 

You slept well for the first time in a long while.

You were still hungry.

There was an abandoned town a day's trek from your new home. You found two new pairs of good boots there, socks, a few sets of clothes, some glass jars and (mercifully) cooking utensils and tools. 

You started making your home better. 

In late spring you were up a tree, peering down on a settlement of geese on the far side of the lake near your new home. 

You carefully pinpointed their eggs, geese could be domesticated, right?

One day, you heard a very familiar sound from outside of your hut. 

The braying of a goat. 

John had somehow made it out alive. 

The stupid, brave, wonderful little goat had been the sole survivor of the massacre at your farm, and he had found his way back to you even through the snow and ice and who knows what else!

You started building a barn for him the same day. And for the pretty cream colored girlfriend he managed to pick up along the way.

Geese could be domesticated, but they were also assholes. They bullied John until his wifey stomped on one of them and broke her wing. 

You decided to name her Valery. 

You made a sauna as soon as you had the spare time. 

You cried the first time you used it. 

Then one day, a helicopter flew overhead. 


End file.
